How far back do these simple and ingenious garments go and what is the reason for its popularity?
The hegemony of the T-shirt began at the beginning of the last century. Although the end of the Victorian era, at the beginning of the 20th century, was accompanied by liberation from corsets and other uncomfortable clothing, no one knows for sure who sewed the first undershirt that could be considered the forerunner of today’s T-shirt, or when and where this happened. At the end of the 19th century, the US Navy started to wear round-collared and buttoned undershirts under their uniforms.
In 1913, the US Navy officially adopted a T-shirt with today’s cut, with the rounded collar showing from under the uniform. In the 1930s, the T-shirt also started to be used as underwear among the general public.
When the American soldiers in World War II wore shirts with a simple cut, that was easy to take care of, and most important, comfortable, the triumph of the product, which was named the T-shirt (T-Type Shirt) after its shape, was decided. The soldiers battling in the hot tropics wearing only their T-shirts ended up on the cover of Life magazine and the T-shirt became a symbol, a hero’s icon.
The development of the T-shirt picked up steam after the war, and was spurred on by the development of the music and film industry in the 1950s, when the famous Hollywood actors, Marlon Brando and James Dean, played heroes who dressed very casually and sexily. In their private lives, they also preferred to wear T-shirts, jeans, and leather jackets, which is why they sometimes called rebels.
American universities and sports clubs started to give away T-shirts with their logos. In the 1960s, with the development of silk screening technology, the T-shirt became the universal messenger. T-shirts started to display affiliations and attitudes. The hippie movement brought messages of peace and love to T-shirts. With the help of T-shirts, merchandise was advertised, peace supported, racism protested, and anarchy promoted. From there on, T-shirts spread into the fashion industry, advertising field, politics, art, and souvenir business.
T-shirts started to be used politically in election campaigns (1960, Kennedy for President), protests and meetings (I hate apartheid), strikes, and the promotion of international organizations (Amnesty International), etc.
Probably the most famous political figure who has been reproduced on T-shirts is Ernesto Guevara, better known as Che Guevara. In the souvenir industry today, a portrait of Che Guevara recorded in 1960 can be seen on shirts all over the world where souvenirs are sold. The wider distribution of souvenir shirts also got its start in America. In 1976, the artist Milton Glaser developed the “I Love NY” logo, in which the world love is replaced by a heart. This quickly became an American icon, and one of the most popular and copied messages in the history of T-shirts (I Love Paris, I Love London, etc.).
One of the first T-shirt advertising campaigns was conducted in the US in 1939, when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer understood the great potential of the T-shirt as an advertising tool. The shirts were used to launch one of the first colour movies, the Wizard of Oz, which later became a cult film. Strangely, it was not until about twenty years later, that the large companies started using T-shirts as advertising tools. It was not until the middle of the 1960s that many companies (Martini, Xerox, Cinzano, Playboy, Marlboro, McDonalds, etc) following the Budweiser brewery’s lead and started printing their logos on shirts. Soon imitation also started, when Pepsi, for instance, tried to create something similar to the Coca-Cola “Enjoy” T-shirt.
