It’s seldom to never that we see them in tie-dye, polka-dot styles. While the Elton John heat-transfers and pug-face children’s tees are certainly part of the ‘story’, it’s perhaps the designs by Hulanicki, Westwood, and Hamnett, amongst other contemporary ones, that highlight the garment’s revolutionary aspect.Graphic tees usually come in solid colors. It is, more than anything else, the subversive potential of the T-shirt and its power as a medium for expression that the exhibition at the London Fashion and Textile Museum examines. “ something to give you a voice … something to believe in that you could wear on your chest that could be read from two-hundred yards. “It seemed as if democracy was slipping through our fingers,” she says regarding the late 70s, when she first began producing her signature slogan T-shirts. Nor did veteran designer Katherine Hamnett fail to appreciate the subversive potential of three stitched-together pieces of cotton. None of this was lost on Vivienne Westwood and her then-partner in crime Malcolm Maclaren, whose T-shirts – both in terms of graphics and tailoring – effectively encapsulated the ethos of the punk movement taking place in Britain in the late 70s. While Dewey lost to Truman, he’d still made history, albeit in a very different context. T-shirts with the name ‘Oz’ emblazoned on them appeared in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz, and – perhaps inspired by the wonderful wizard’s minions in Emerald City – Republican candidate Thomas E Dewey used the first-ever slogan T-shirt in his 1948 ‘Dew it with Dewey’ presidential campaign. By the time A Streetcar Named Desire screened in cinemas, graphic tees were already a thing. The plain white T-shirt may have caused a stir in America in the 50s, but it had miles to go in realising its full potential for, as Nothdruft terms it, ‘disruption’. “It was rebellious, because were actually undergarments … It was a tough political statement.” More than they could have ever imagined, Brando and Dean nailed the style and spirit of what had thitherto been an unassuming piece of underwear to a tee. “It’s just a white T-shirt, but it already has that kind of disruptive potential,” Nothdruft says of the kind worn by Brando and Dean. Prior to this, the T-shirt was, by and large, an undergarment meant to be worn beneath one’s ‘proper’ clothes, and was seldom regarded as an article in its own right. “So early in September Amory,” the author wrote of his protagonist, “provided with ‘six suits summer underwear, six suits winter underwear, one sweater or T-shirt, one jersey, one overcoat, winter, etc,’ set out for New England, the land of schools.”Īlthough the tees worn by Amory could, in the 30s, be found in department stores throughout the States, as well as seen all around American high-schools in the 40s, it wasn’t until heart throbs like Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire and James Dean in 1955’s Rebel Without a Cause rocked them on the silver screen that the T-shirt truly became the T-shirt, no matter how plain and simple it still was. In the same year, it also happened to find its way into Merriam-Webster’s dictionary. Things changed, however, with the publication of F Scott Fitzgerald’s 1920 novel This Side of Paradise, which marked the first-ever appearance of the name. Until the 20s, the T-shirt was called by every name but its own. Shortly afterwards, the Cooper Underwear Company began marketing the tops - sans buttons - as ‘bachelor undershirts’ (as there was no need to resew buttons back into place), and in 1913, they became a part of the uniform of the US Navy, where they were known as ‘lightweight short-sleeve white cotton undervests’. Frustrated with its design, workers cut them in half, tucking the top bit into the bottom. Effective at keeping one toasty in colder temperatures, it wasn’t exactly suited towards heat or warm weather. Its origins lie in the ‘union suit’, a sort of button-down onesie worn by both men and women (but particularly male workers) towards the end of the 19th Century in the US. “ is a really basic way of telling the world who and what you are.”Īlthough T-shirt-like garments, such as the tunic, date back to ancient times, it was only recently (relatively speaking) that the T-shirt as it is now known first appeared. “It feels quite relevant … it was a matter of the personal as politicised,” says Nothdruft in reference to the exhibition’s premise. While the garment’s history is a highlight of the exhibition, it isn’t the focus rather, curator Dennis Nothdruft and team have decided to showcase – as per the show’s title – the various subcultures that have surrounded the T-shirt, as well as its power as a socio-political medium.
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