A Brief History of the T-Shirt
From utility to revolution
Background: Sailors on the USS California, 1923
The origins of the T-shirt can be traced back to the Industrial Revolution and the invention of the industrial knitting machine in the late 1800s. Textile mills in the US began producing a unique tight knit cotton that was developed into hosiery and undergarments. P. H. Hanes Knitting Co., predecessor to the Hanes clothing company, created an undergarment known as the “Union Suit”[1] for labour intensive work. The Union Suit resembled a long-john style underwear with short sleeves, intended to be worn in hot or cold weather.
Over time, the Union Suit would evolve into a two piece variation, addressing consumer frustrations of the limiting mobility the Union Suit allowed. Many men had taken to cutting the suit in half and tucking the remaining top portion into their work pants. The Union Suit was sold in two pieces, a top and bottom, effectively creating the first T-shirt .
Russell Manufacturing Co., another producer of undergarments, turned their marketing efforts toward the burgeoning athletics market in the 1920s, marketing the top solely as a bachelor shirt.[2] For the first half century of its existence, the T-shirt existed to “get dirty, be laundered frequently, and was rarely seen except in special circumstances.”[3]
In 1913, the T-shirt was incorporated into the US Navy’s official uniform, categorized as lightweight short sleeve cotton vests.[4] They would remain an unseen undergarment until the Second World War, when off-duty servicemen were seen by the public in news publications enjoying leisure time in their undershirts. The term ‘T-shirt’ first appeared in the 1920 novel, This Side of Paradise, by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald, and added to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary the same year.[5]
In the inter-war period, the T-shirt had already made its fashion debut among women’s styles. Pressed by fabric shortages in France following the First World War, famed designer Coco Chanel came across the simple garment and incorporated it into her subsequent collections. The look was soon adopted by French women, but failed to make an impact with women in the US.
Image: Corporal Alexander Le Gerda, member of the 853rd Ordnance Company, on the cover of Life magazine July 13, 1942. The magazine states that the “shirt he is wearing is part of his athletic equipment.”
Courtesy of Google x Life Magazine
Civilian men, however, began to incorporate the piece into their wardrobes. In its infancy, 1940s California surfer culture began knitting images into heavier T-shirts and experimented with branding. [6]
Motorcycle gangs that roamed the California coast such as the Hell’s Angels wore them under their insignia-emblazoned vests.[7] It was the singular style of these self-proclaimed bands of degenerates that captured the imagination of Hollywood and solidified the T-shirt as an icon of rebellion, youth culture and dissent.
Image: Early heavy knit tee with imagery. California, ca.1940
Two of the most prolific actors of the 1950s, Marlon Brando and James Dean, rose to fame clad in a tight white T-shirt. Brando in The Wild One (1953), emulating the aforementioned motorcycle gang culture, and in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) as the dreamy but despotic drunk Stanley Kowalski.
Dean, in one of his four films before his untimely death, Rebel Without a Cause (1955), created a sensation that woke the masses of America up to the rebellious nature of the T-shirt.
Simultaneously, the T-shirts association with the working man and servicemen epitomized the strengthening of American values that defined the 1950s. The T-shirt promoted how to be rebelliously cool while still uniquely American.
Image: Brando, in a publicity still for A Streetcar Named Desire, 1951
Entering into the “long”[8] 1960s, a time of great social upheaval and overlapping revolutionary movements, the T-shirt was mobilized to aid in the fight for rights across the country. Paired with the silk screening process, which had been in use since World War I to create propaganda posters, the T-shirt became a vital instrument in the fight for equality.
The concept of the printed T-shirt for public use had existed since 1948, when it was used to promote the presidential campaign of Thomas E. Dewey. In the 1950s, T-shirts were used in small amounts to promote television shows such as Howdy Doody and merchandise for rock icon Elvis Presley.[9]
Thomas E. Dewey presidential campaign T-shirt with the slogan "Dew-it-with-Dewey", 1948.
One of the first examples of the printed T-shirt for consumer use, made in promotion for the show Howdy Doody, 1950s
Changes in the printing process and the invention of a more durable ink, plastisol, allowed for the mass creation of t-shirts emblazoned with iconography, slogans and imagery.[10] The t-shirt allowed the wearer to create a direct but non-verbal link between themselves and the causes they cared about, a silent protest that could be acknowledged by those passing on the street.
The latter half of the twentieth century witnessed massive change in the United States on every level; political, social, cultural, and economic. The sentiments of those that lived through these movements are memorialized in many ways, but few as personal as the T-shirt.
Continue: The 1960s
Notes
[1] Patrick Guetta, Marc Guetta, and Alison A. Nieder. Vintage T-Shirts (Köln, Germany: Tacshen, 2010) Pg. 9
[2] Bekrab, Jubin. T-Shirt: The Rebel With a Cause, bbc.com. Published 2 Feb, 2018. Par. 5
[3] Guetta, Guetta, Nieder. Vintage T-Shirts. Pg. 9
[4] Bekrab, T-Shirt: The Rebel With a Cause. Par. 6
[5] Ibid.
[6] Guetta, Guetta, Nieder. Vintage T-Shirts. Pg. 10
[7] Thompson, Hunter S. Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga (Random House Publishing Group, 1965) Pg. 24
[8] Young, Ralph. Dissent: The History of An American Idea (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2015) Pg. 453
[9] Guetta, Guetta, Nieder. Vintage T-Shirts. Pg. 359
[10] Ibid., Pg. 10
Images and Media
Sailors on the USS California, 1923. Guetta, Guetta, Nieder. Vintage T-Shirts. Pg. 10
Corporal Alexander Le Gerda, member of the 853rd Ordnance Company, on the cover of Life magazine July 13, 1942. Accessed through the LIFE photo archive hosted by Google. https://books.google.ca/books?id=3E0EAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=Alexander%20Le%20Gerda&f=false
Early heavy knit tee with imagery. California, ca.1940. Guetta, Guetta, Nieder. Vintage T-Shirts, Pg. 11
Brando, in a publicity still for A Streetcar Named Desire, 1951
Thomas E. Dewey presidential campaign t-shirt with the slogan "Dew-it-with-Dewey", 1948. From the collections of the National Museum of American History. ID No. PL.227739.1948.C07
T-shirt made in promotion for the television show Howdy Doody, 1950s. Guetta, Guetta, Nieder. Vintage T-Shirts. Pg. 359