Me in a Cab’s ‘T’
Like scientist Richard Feynman who only ever ate chocolate ice cream as a desert because he didn’t want to waste time making decisions or Steve Jobs who always wore the same clothes for the same reason, I tend to find myself wearing black t-shirts and jeans every day, because it’s easy. However, things were not always that way. I grew up loving a good picture, tour, or slogan t-shirt and even now (although I rarely wear them) I still add interesting and iconic t-shirts to my quite extensive collection. I’m not sure when my love for t-shirts began, nor can I pin-point exact moments when my taste in t-shirts changed, but my memory of wearing them begins in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I have recently been going through the family boxes of photographs, (this is a past-time that makes me very happy) and I came across a photo of me when I was about 10 in a t-shirt that I remember very fondly, a scratch ‘n’ sniff t-shirt with a picture of a banana on the front that smelt like a banana when you scratched it. (pic below)
I remember my amazement at this invention and also the smell fading gradually, as the shirt went through the cycle of washing and wearing ( the banana smell lasted a surprisingly long time).
I’ve had a selection of favourite t-shirts through my life and will get back to a few of these shortly, but first some history of this most utilitarian of garments. In the 19th century men’s underwear was usually a one-piece vest and long-johns combo, but it became much more practical to separate the two garments. In 1913 the U.S. Navy included the t-shirt (known as such because of its shape) as part of their standard recruit’s kit and from there it became popular for many American manual workers to wear a t-shirt without an over-shirt (along with their jeans) in the warmer months of the year. Jeans and t-shirts became the manual workers unofficial uniform, and it has pretty much stayed that way for well over 100 years. It wasn’t until the 1950s when teenagers were searching for fashions that they could call their own, did the mighty ‘T’ find its true place in the fashion hall of fame.
Marlon Brando sported a t-shirt (under-shirt) in the 1951 movie ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ and in 1955 James Dean defined the rebel costume of t-shirt, jeans, and Baracuta G9/Harrington jacket in ‘Rebel Without a Cause’. The oldest example of a printed promotional t-shirt dates back to 1948 and is held in Washington’s Smithsonian Museum, it is a campaign T-shirt for New York Governor Thomas Dewey's 1948 presidential campaign (below). 
During the 1950s many saw the potential of the white t-shirt as an unexploited piece of advertising real-estate on which to print your promotional message. The blank space could be used for brand names, advertisements, souvenirs, and political statements. The baseball cap (or snapback), the jeans patch, the bumper sticker and of course the button badge attempted to follow suit, but none have been able to display a message so clearly and in such a large space.
A pioneer of the counter-culture art and slogan t-shirt was artist and designer Warren Lloyd Dayton, who in 1967, created ‘T’s with images of polluted lungs, the face of civil rights leader César Chavez and the Statue of Liberty (amongst many others). 
Warren Lloyd Dayton t-shirt designs
During this period screen-printing and customising your t-shirts became very popular. Tie-dye made its way from India and Africa to the streets of Greenwich Village in New York in the 1960s because of the tenacity of dye salesman and manager of RIT Dyes, Don Price. The RIT dye brand was failing, so he took it Greenwich Village and got designers to use it in tie-dying, from here it was picked up by designers such as Roy Halston Frowick and worn by the hippy elite; Joe Cocker, Mama Cass and Janis Joplin. Don Price arranged for tie-dye ‘T’s to be handed out to audience and performers at Woodstock and thus a counter-culture iconic fashion statement begins as a piece of capitalist marketing (Malcolm McLaren would have been proud) .
I never really got the humorous, witty or ironic t-shirt, but in sea-side towns the length and breadth of the U.K. and stag and hen parties across the world, you’ll often find someone in an ‘I’m with stupid’ t-shirt or a t-shirt with a printed-on tuxedo. I’ve never been a fan, but I’ll always champion the rights of anyone to wear what they like on their t-shirt as long as it is not racist, sexist, or homophobic. Whilst we’re on the subject of being offensive, it would be amiss of me not to mention the punk holy trinity of Malcolm McLaren, Vivienne Westwood, and Jamie Reid, who between them designed some of the most iconic and certainly provocative punk t-shirts. The Destroy (inverted crucifix) design, the Queen with safety pin and the Cambridge Rapist, all caused a great deal of criticism. The Naked Cowboys t-shirt even ended up in a prosecution for obscene exhibition in August 1975. I understand many of these shirts were created to provoke a reaction but whatever the intention behind them, I could never bring myself to wear a swastika or the Cambridge Rapist on a t-shirt. I did however have a treasured Red Brigade t-shirt (the same as the one worn by Joe Strummer) and was verbally attacked when wearing it, by an Italian woman in a chip shop who was very upset that I could be wearing such a thing.
My t-shirts collection really started from around this period and quite a few of them have the sleeves cut off. I remember a black Sid Vicious t-shirt that was given to me by a friend and had faded so much that you could barely see his face, but you could still see his two-fingered salute quite clearly. An ex-girlfriend’s younger brother took a liking to it also and I don’t think I’ve seen it since the early 1980s. My Psychic TV and Throbbing Gristle t-shirts are probably still my most treasured. They are rarely worn, but it warms my heart to know that they are still in the draw.
The 1980s saw Sonny Crockett in Miami Vice make it acceptable to wear the t-shirt with a suit. It also saw Katherine Hamnett create her ‘Choose Life’ t-shirts with bold black lettered slogans on white backgrounds. She said ‘I wanted to put a really large message on T-shirts that could be read from 20 or 30ft away’. Slogans work on so many different levels; they’re almost subliminal. They’re also a way of people aligning themselves to a cause. They’re tribal. Wearing one is like branding yourself.’ Of course there were also the Hamnett influenced Frankie Says and Relax T-Shirts by Paul Morley. 
Over the years many of my favourite t-shirts have vanished and I wear very few of the printed ones I still own. I am glad to say however that my son and daughter proudly wear my old t-shirts, still buy souvenir gig t-shirts and love to wander around Camden Market and buy new ones that make their own statements. I’m not sure how I feel about being able to buy Ramones and Che Guevara t-shirts in Primark, seems some of that rebellious message has gone from them, but this humble garment is not going anywhere. That big blank space is just waiting for the new ‘I Heart NY’, ‘RUN DMC’, ‘Naked Cowboys’, ‘Smiley Face’, ‘Choose Life’, ‘Frankie says…’ ‘Red Brigade’, ‘Nuclear Power No Thanks’, ‘This is What a Feminist Looks Like’, ‘No Music on a Dead Planet’ or even a Scratch ‘n’ Sniff banana.
