T-Shirts | Why? |Where? | How?
Got to thinking about T-Shirts (amazing what you can think about randomly whilst wandering around doing your usual routine. I was walking the dog in the cold and rain…lovely!).
When I got in I decided to do a little bit of research! (For those of you who bore easily! Skip to the end!).
Apparently the earliest recorded t-shirt or item of clothing similar was seen around 1919! Shocking I thought! Seriously thought everything fashion related started in the 80’s (yes I’m being sarcastic).
In late twentieth-century American culture T-shirts got their start as a humble item of men’s underwear (GASP) and got its name because when spread flat it formed a stubby letter T. Its little sleeves and round collar distinguished the T-shirt from the standard sleeveless undershirt of the day (otherwise known as old man shirts! You know the type? Some of you may be wearing them now! If so, I apologise profusely for any insult this comment may have caused…(!). The sleeves may also have helped bring the T-shirt out of hiding in the 1930s and 1940s, since they offered a gesture toward modesty as well as a cache for a pack of cigarettes (Tut tut).
Once T-Shirts were on general view, and more and more people started to see them wandering around the city streets and countryside, T-shirts became somewhat like a canvas for images and messages. First came a basic white, then eventually they soon came in all shades; one of the first establishments to find an actual official purpose for them were schools and sports teams, and then every design or slogan imaginable, which obviously we see every day in society today.
Today no public event is complete without its accompanying T-shirt. Cold weather doesn’t slow us down; we just cover the T-shirt with a sweatshirt, a 1925 American invention (see, and I thought I’d invented that look, dammit!)
Though it must have been around at least a year earlier (hence the reference to earlier to 1919), the first official mention of the T-shirt is featured in a book called “This Side of Paradise”, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. In the novel, a wealthy, VERY self-absorbed 15-year-old boy from Middle America heads off to prep school (what is prep school anyway? Does anyone know? Must find out that sometime) in Connecticut with a wardrobe including “six suits summer underwear, six suits winter underwear, one sweater or T shirt(!), one jersey….” in time mention of the garment became very popular for use in writing and media in the fashionable and unpredictable roaring twenties! Obviously these historical (perhaps an exaggeration!) references have faded in time, but the two informal garments we began to wear in those times, the T-shirt and the sweatshirt, hang in our regular vocabulary and attire more prominently than ever before. And as usual, we have the Americans to thank for, well let’s face it, a staple in everyone’s wardrobe, not to mention the reason why I can go Christmas shopping at present! Thank you people!
Right…asleep yet?
7 Sleeps to go. Wonder if Santa wears a t-shirt?!
