T-Shirt

A T-shirt (or tee shirt) is a shirt which is pulled on over the head to cover
most of a person's torso. A T-shirt is usually buttonless and collarless, with a
round neck and short sleeves. However, many people incorrectly use the
term T-shirt to describe any short sleeved shirt or blouse - a polo shirt or
other collared shirt is not a T-shirt. The sleeves of the T-shirt extend at least
slightly over the shoulder but not completely over the elbow (in short-sleeve
version). A shirt that is either longer or shorter than this ceases to be a T-
shirt. T-shirts are typically made of cotton or polyester fibers (or a mix of the
two), knitted together in a jersey stitch that gives a T-shirt its distinctive soft
texture. T-shirts can be decorated with text and/or pictures, and are
sometimes used to advertise (see human billboard).

T-shirt fashions include styles for men and women, and for all age groups,
including baby, youth, and adult sizes.

History

The T-shirt evolved from undergarments used in the 19th century, through
cutting the one-piece "union suit" underwear into separate top and bottom
garments, with the top long enough to tuck under the waistband of the
bottoms. T-shirts, with and without buttons, were adopted by miners and
stevedores during the late 1800's as a convenient covering for hot
environments.

T-shirts, as a slip on garment without buttons, originally became popular in

the United States when they were issued by the U.S. Navy during or
following the Spanish American War. These were a crew-necked, short-
sleeved, white cotton undershirt to be worn under a uniform. It became
common for sailors and Marines in work parties, the early submarines, and
tropical climates to remove their uniform "jacket," wearing (and soiling)
only the undershirt. It is possible that the Navy uniform boards first
discovered the T-shirt by watching dock crews.

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Named the T-shirt due to the shape of the garment's outline, they soon
became popular as a bottom layer of clothing for workers in various
industries, including agriculture. The T-shirt was easily fitted, easily
cleaned, and inexpensive, and for this reason, it became the shirt of choice
for young boys (perhaps more the choice of their mothers than of the boys
themselves). Boy's shirts were made in various colors and patterns, and
became so ubiquitous that cartoon character Charlie Brown rarely was seen
without his T-shirt with distinctive zig-zag stripe around the waist.

By the time of the Great Depression, the T-shirt was often the default
garment to be worn when doing farm or ranch chores, as well as other times
when modesty called for a torso covering but conditions called for
lightweight fabrics.

Following World War II it became common to see veterans wearing their

uniform trousers with their T-shirts as casual clothing, and they became even
more popular after Marlon Brando wore one in A Streetcar Named Desire,
finally achieving status as fashionable, stand-alone, outer-wear garments.

Trends

T-shirts were originally worn as undershirts. Now T-shirts are worn

frequently as the only piece of clothing on the top half of the body, other
than possibly a bra or an undershirt (vest). T-shirts have also become a
medium for self-expression and advertising, with any imaginable
combination of words, art and even photographs on display.

A T-shirt typically extends to the waist. Variants of the T-shirt, like the tank
top, A-shirt (with the nickname "wife beater"), muscle shirt, scoop neck, and
the V-neck have been developed. Hip hop fashion calls for "tall-T" T-shirts
which may extend down to the knees. A 1990s trend in women's clothing
involved tight-fitting "cropped" T-shirts that are short enough to reveal the
midriff. Another popular trend is wearing a "long-sleeved T-shirt", then
putting a short-sleeved T-shirt of a different color over the long-sleeved
shirt; this is known as "layering."

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Decoration

In the early 1950s several companies based in Miami, Florida, started to

decorate T-shirts with different resort names and various characters. The
first company was Tropix Togs, under founder Sam Kantor, in Miami. They
were the original license for Walt Disney characters that included Mickey
Mouse and Davy Crockett. Later other companies expanded into the T-shirt
printing business that included Sherry Manufacturing Company also based
in Miami. Sherry started in 1948 by its owner and founder Quinton Sandler
as a screen print scarf business and evolved into one of the largest screen
printed resort and licensed apparel companies in the United States.

In 1959, plastisol, a more durable and stretchable ink, was invented,

allowing much more variety in T-shirt designs.

In the 1960s, the ringer T-shirt appeared and became a staple fashion for
youth and rock-n-rollers. The decade also saw the emergence of tie-dyeing
and screen-printing on the basic T-shirt. In the late 1960s Richard Ellman,
Robert Tree, Bill Kelly, and Stanley Mouse set up the Monster Company in
Mill Valley, California, to produce fine art designs expressly for T-shirts.
Monster T-shirts often feature emblems and motifs associated with the
Grateful Dead and marijuana culture. Additionally, one of the most popular
symbols to emerge out of the political turmoil of the 1960's were T-shirts
bearing the face of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara.

The most common form of commercial T-shirt decoration is screen-printing.

In screen-printing, a design is separated into individual colors. Plastisol or
water based inks are applied to the shirt through mesh screens which limits
the areas where ink is deposited. In most commercial T-shirt printing, the
specific colors in the design are used. To achieve a wider color spectrum
with a limited number of colors, process printing (using only cyan, magenta,
yellow and black ink) or simulated process (using only white, black, red,
green, blue, and gold ink) is effective. Process printing is best suited for light
colored shirts. Simulated process is best suited for dark colored shirts. Very
few companies continue to use water-based inks on their shirts. The majority
of other companies that create shirts prefer to use plastisol due to the ability
to print on varying colors without the need for color adjustment at the art
level.
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Specialty inks trend in and out of fashion and include; shimmer, puff,
discharge and chino based inks. A metallic foil can be heat pressed and
stamped onto any plastisol ink. When combined with shimmer ink, metallics
give a mirror like effect wherever the previously screened plastisol ink was
applied. Specialty inks are more expensive to purchase as well as screen and
tend to appear on garments in boutiques.

Other methods of decoration used on T-shirts include airbrush, applique,

embroidery, impressing or embossing and the ironing on of either flock
lettering, heat transfers, or dye-sublimation transfers. Laser printers are
capable of printing on plain paper using a special toner containing
sublimation dyes which can then be permanently heat-transferred to T-shirts.

In the 1980s, thermochromatic dyes were used to produce T-shirts that

changed color when subjected to heat. The Global Hypercolour brand of
these was a common sight on the streets of the UK for a few years, but has
since mostly disappeared. These were also very popular in the United States
among teenagers in the late 1980s. A downside of color-change garments is
that the dyes can easily be damaged, especially by washing in warm water,
or dye other clothes during washing.

At the turn of the century, designing custom T-shirts online became more
popular. Popular websites began to use digital printing (such as Direct to
Garment or DTG printing) to allow customers to design their own T-shirts
online with no minimum orders. In the beginning, DTG could not print well
on dark garments; however, with the help of some online T-Shirt retailers,
printer manufacturers such as T-Jet have all but perfected the process,
providing consumers with many more printing options.

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Expressive messages

Since the 1980s, T-shirts have flourished as a form of personal expression.

Screen printed T-shirts have been a standard form of marketing for major
consumer products, such as Coca-cola and Mickey Mouse, since the 1970s.
However, since the 1990s, it has become common practice for companies of
all sizes to produce T-shirts with their corporate logos or messages as part of
their overall advertising campaigns. Since the late 1980s and especially the
1990s, T-shirts with prominent designer-name logos have become popular,
especially with teenagers and young adults. These garments allow
consumers to flaunt their taste for designer brands in an inexpensive way, in
addition to being decorative. Examples of designer T-shirt branding include
Calvin Klein, FUBU, Ralph Lauren and The Gap. These examples also
include representations of rock bands, among other obscure pop-culture
references. Licensed T-shirts are also extremely popular. Movie and TV T-
shirts can have images of the actors, logos and funny quotes from the movie
or TV show. Often, the most popular T-shirts are those that characters wore
in the film itself (e.g., Bubba Gump from Forest Gump and Vote For Pedro
from Napoleon Dynamite).

Designer Katharine Hamnett in the early 1980s pioneered outsize T-shirts

with large-print slogans. The early 2000s saw the renewed popularity of T-
shirts with slogans and designs with a strong inclination to the humorous
and/or ironic. The trend has only increased later in this decade; embraced by
celebrities, such as Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, and reflected back on
them, too ('Team Aniston'). The political and social statements that T-shirts
often display have become, since the 2000s, one of the reasons that they
have so deeply permeated different levels of culture and society The
statements also may be found to be offensive, shocking or pornographic to
some. Many different organizations have caught on to the statement-making
trend, including chain and independent stores, websites, and schools. A
popular phrase on the front of T-shirts demonstrating T-shirts' popularity
among tourists is the humorous phrase "I did and all I got was this lousy T-
shirt." Examples include "My parents went to Las Vegas and all I got was
this lousy T-shirt." T-shirt exchange is an activity where people trade their
T-shirts they are wearing. Some designs specifically write on the shirt "trade
with me".

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