The T-shirt History

T-shirt began its life as a functional item of underwear used in the 19th century by cutting one-piece underwear into separate top and bottom garments and designed not to be seen. In the early days, it would have been considered offensive to reveal the cloth. Later on it was coined the name T-shirt due to the shape of the garment’s outline.

The beginning of the T-shirt stem from Europe where U.S. soldiers were sweating in their woollen uniforms while their European counterparts were less restricted in their lightweight cotton undershirts during the First World War. The U.S. Navy then issued crew-necked, short-sleeved, white cotton undershirts. It became very common for sailors and marines to wear these comfortable lightweight cotton undershirts under their uniforms. By the 1920s the T-shirt had become an official term in the American-English dictionary. And by the late 1930s some U.S. retailers were marketing them, namely Fruit of the Loom, Hanes and Sears, and Roebuck & Co.

The cotton T-shirt was standard issue as an undergarment in the U.S. armed forces during the Second World War. Later it became quite common to see returning U.S. servicemen wearing their uniform trousers with their T-shirts as casual clothing. The war also provided another preview of the T-shirt as soldiers crudely customized their vest-style tees to identify their station and using any materials they could find – often handmade, cut-out stencils, and vehicle spray paint.

In the 1940s and 1950s, colleges in U.S. started printing their names and logos on T-shirts, normally using flock iron-on fonts in the early days. These were sold in the college stores on campus for students to wear with American pride. Later versions of these U.S. university tees, such as Yale and Harvard, became a part of the early 1960s Brit mod look alongside other U.S. Ivy League-style preppy garments.

The trend for small U.S. businesses, such as garages, diners and electrical stores, to print their own logo or products on T-shirts for customers became common in the 1950s. They advertised brand loyalty in this way long before the major big league companies caught on. By the mid 1960s, these walking billboard advertising tees were big business.

Hollywood definitely had a big impact on the T-shirt.  In 1951, Marlon Brando donned a thin, white T-shirt in “A Streetcar Named Desire”. Teens across the country went wild for the look and by the year ended, T-shirt sale reached US$ 180 million in total. Four years later, James Dean shocked the world by wearing his underwear outside on the big screen in “Rebel without a Cause”. This marked the T-shirt’s long-awaited progression from underwear to outerwear, infusing the style with the fashionable sex appeal at the same time. The rebel association was the catalyst for the style becoming a desirable item of clothing with the youth of the day and coincided with the birth of rock and roll.

The popularity of the printed rock and roll band tee exploded in the 1970s, but the roots lie firmly in the 1960s. Although mid 1960s invasion-style groups dipped their toes in the T-shirt market, it was West Coast gig promoters – such as Bill Graham pushing local acts like the Grateful Dead – who first realized this emerging potential to sell T-shirts as well as gig tickets at venues. The music industry capitalized the T-shirt when rock bands began selling T-shirts with their slogans and images at concerts. Later on, tie dye shirts became the entire craze especially in 1969 when advertiser Don Price produced hundreds of shirts and gave them away at Woodstock.

Later in the 1970s, the first wave of Sex Pistols and Clash fans – particularly those outside central London – had to create their own customized Kings Road-esque creations. These do-it-yourself tees were crudely vandalized and defaced using marker, tape, pins, and zips. The late 1970s then marked the birth of the “I ♥ NY” tee which are still popular today.

During the 20th century, the T-shirt went from military-issue wear to an iconic fashion statement. The shirt went through several mid-century phases, as a symbol of heroism worn by Second World War fighters, the rebel uniform of movie icons, the socially conscious garb of the 1960s peace movement, and the in-your-face costume of the punk rock scene. The T-shirt was also a democratizing force in the military because it was worn by all ranks, a philosophy extended to the civilian world when veterans by the likes of Elvis Presley, John F. Kennedy as well as the working man kept wearing the shirts after completing their service. And today, the influence of T-shirts reach every country across the planet and can be used for anything – from casual clothing to advertising, from souvenirs to protesting.

“In a word, the T-shirt is to clothing what the blank sheet of paper is to writing — a surface for imagination and free expression to run wild.” Charlotte Brunel