a
T-SHIRT
After hitting a fashion zenith a few decades ago, the white T-shirt has since become inconsequential.
But there's no doubt it's a classic; the clothing equivalent of a great haircut or marvellous pair of sunglasses. These days going out in a plain white T-shirt simply implies a quiet confidence, someone who doesn't need to be flash to feel good. Bring back the white T!
IN PRAISE OF THE PLAIN OBVIOUS
War: what is it good for? Well, starting sartorial trends, if little else. In modern-day fashion cycles, season after season brings references to, or witless revivals of, the aesthetic known as "military chic”. These endless parades of epaulet-adorned blazers or camouflage jackets, trench coats and parachute trousers - reworked, rehashed, but rarely revealing any real improvement upon the original designs - are aimed squarely at easily-pleased male and female punters who, one imagines, are ill-familiar with the inside of an Army Surplus store.
Were it not for soldiers in World War I, the simple white T-shirt, might have remained a sheepish and unremarkable undergarment for men; practical for warmth, but too embarrassingly intimate for polite (or mixed) company. From these hyper-masculine sweat-stained origins, however, a superstar "wardrobe staple" of the future was born - a plain, obvious and comparatively inexpensive garment that has transcended age, race, class, gender and sexuality, in a similar manner to that of jeans. Kids, teens and queens, mums, dads, plus lasses and lads all, at one time or another, don white T-shirts - for reasons of comfort, style or fashion, or simply because they just can't be arsed to colour co-ordinate their outfit on a particular day.
The founding fathers of the T-shirt movement as we know it were French soldiers of the so-called GREAT WAR, who would sport their short-sleeved white cotton undergarments as outerwear. Dapper under fire, they understood this proto-T was suitable both for their grisly jobs or hastily snatched moments of play. This slightly daring look was noticed by envious US military men - perspiring like pigs in their heavy long johns worn under regulation scratchy woollen shirts and trousers.
Bartering ensued between the American and French soldiers, with food or cigarettes eagerly swapped for the covetable garments. Hence, once the Yanks headed home, many a white T went with them.
By the time of World War II, the US Army and Navy had wisely noted the effectiveness of the T-shirt as kit for their fighting men-folk, and issued white ones as standard wear.
Perhaps, then, it is from this point onwards that the white T-shirt truly began to enjoy an "all American" status, deservedly or not. Stretched over the corn-fed physiques of the country's square-jawed GIs, its earlier French incarnation was eclipsed, though more pressing military concerns meant that no one was fretting much about who wore what first, of course...
As HOLLYWOOD milked the public’s heightened wartime emotions to the hilt, morale-boosting news clips and epic movies alike featured real or make-believe soldiers, clad in white T-shirts galore. The look - conveying hunkiness, honesty and heroism - began to filter into the public domain.
In 1951, however, the pristine white T-shirt was cast with darker, more raunchy and rebellious overtones, sealing its subsequent iconic status. This palpable shift came courtesy of actor MARLON BRANDO squeezing his impressive upper half into one for the brutish role of STANLEY KOWALSKI in a film version of TENNESSEE WILLIAMS' A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE. BRANDO's look-at-me pecs appeal - his bulging muscles straining against a grease-splattered T - was unashamed and unabashed, film-goers wanted to look like him or to fuck him, or a combination of both. Disaffected teenagers homed in on BRANDO's sexy style gesture, adopting it as their own and further imbuing it with a youthful rebellion fit for the real world. In doing so, they fashioned a tangible gap between their own shiny new dress codes and those of a more modest, frumpy ilk, hitherto adhered to by their elders. BRANDO would go on to famously flaunt a tight white T-shirt once more on the screen, when he played motorbike outlaw JOHNNY in the 1954 film THE WILD ONE. By 1955, ELVIS PRESLEY was also rocking the same look, though it was JAMES DEAN, of course, who took it to its zenith in the same year, teaming a white T with blue jeans in REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE.
Throughout this era, the white T-shirt remained largely pure, uncluttered by adorning images or text - the only alteration being a pack of cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve. As a craze, it was still very much a "man thing". Around the time of the late 1950s, though, this began to change. Technological advances enabled the likes of WALT DISNEY to offer kiddy-friendly peel-on/peel-off designs to customise plain T-shirts. By the 1960s, tie-dyeing and screen printing techniques were being widely applied on to T-shirts that were bought in equal measure by men and women, in particular young adults opting out of mainstream society and beating a path to the hippy promised land. With the onset of the 1970s, bands and sports brands began gaily splashing their names and logos all over T-shirts: paradoxical-ly, those opting at the time to wear a plain white T. devoid of any such form of visual noise, began to seem boring and decidedly non-rebellious. This about-turn was further reinforced in the mid 70s, when subversives such as VIVIENNE WESTWOOD offered up sleeveless T-shirts adorned with chicken bones. feathers and pulp-type sloganeering, and again in the mid 80s, when KATHERINE HAM-NETT plastered withering political statistics and sound bites upon billowing oversized T-shirts, geared for unisex consumption but ultimately usurped in commercial terms by parodies merchandised by the likes of UK pop band FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD.
Hence, throughout the past few decades, good old-fashioned white T-shirts, worn in their own right, have been pretty much elbowed out of the way by other, more fanciful innovations and notions. For many men, these rather humble garments - in the original short sleeve, round neck format - have consequently gone back to merely being a form of underwear, often worn beneath a button-up shirt or jumper. So, although labels such as HANES, CALVIN KLEIN, RALPH LAUREN, ARMANI and FRUIT OF THE LOOM still do brisk business across the world - having gradually refined and improved the fit and fabric of original Army-era Ts - spotting equivalent numbers of men actually wearing any such "boring" items with pride is none too easy. Clearly, amid the style-aware "METRO-SEXUAL" and homosexual fraternities, it is the V-neck T-shirt with fake bullet holes and graffiti slogans (or a polo shirt in any shade other than white) that currently rules supreme, although an older clone-type gay, influenced in his adolescence by images of BRANDO and DEAN, or maybe even NICK KAMEN in the hugely successful 80s campaign for LEVI'S 501s, might still tend to reach for the classic white T.
Those men who determinedly continue to sheath themselves in this familiar yet overlooked classic, irrespective of age or body shape, are possessed of an appealing self-confidence which neutralises the hypnotic spell cast by the neurotic fashion industry. Some white T-shirt diehards have, no doubt, previously dabbled in dressing-to-impress, but eventually abstained from making complex aesthetic decisions altogether; others may simply never have entered into the STYLE WARS in the first place. Together, now, their ranks operate in neutral territory. Their stance fundamentally undermines our commonly-held belief that wearing the latest trends (or even better, creating them) automatically makes you interesting. Or fantastic.
IN PRAISE OF THE PLAIN OBVIOUS
War: what is it good for? Well, starting sartorial trends, if little else. In modern-day fashion cycles, season after season brings references to, or witless revivals of, the aesthetic known as "military chic”. These endless parades of epaulet-adorned blazers or camouflage jackets, trench coats and parachute trousers - reworked, rehashed, but rarely revealing any real improvement upon the original designs - are aimed squarely at easily-pleased male and female punters who, one imagines, are ill-familiar with the inside of an Army Surplus store.
Were it not for soldiers in World War I, the simple white T-shirt, might have remained a sheepish and unremarkable undergarment for men; practical for warmth, but too embarrassingly intimate for polite (or mixed) company. From these hyper-masculine sweat-stained origins, however, a superstar "wardrobe staple" of the future was born - a plain, obvious and comparatively inexpensive garment that has transcended age, race, class, gender and sexuality, in a similar manner to that of jeans. Kids, teens and queens, mums, dads, plus lasses and lads all, at one time or another, don white T-shirts - for reasons of comfort, style or fashion, or simply because they just can't be arsed to colour co-ordinate their outfit on a particular day.
The founding fathers of the T-shirt movement as we know it were French soldiers of the so-called GREAT WAR, who would sport their short-sleeved white cotton undergarments as outerwear. Dapper under fire, they understood this proto-T was suitable both for their grisly jobs or hastily snatched moments of play. This slightly daring look was noticed by envious US military men - perspiring like pigs in their heavy long johns worn under regulation scratchy woollen shirts and trousers.
Bartering ensued between the American and French soldiers, with food or cigarettes eagerly swapped for the covetable garments. Hence, once the Yanks headed home, many a white T went with them.
By the time of World War II, the US Army and Navy had wisely noted the effectiveness of the T-shirt as kit for their fighting men-folk, and issued white ones as standard wear.
Perhaps, then, it is from this point onwards that the white T-shirt truly began to enjoy an "all American" status, deservedly or not. Stretched over the corn-fed physiques of the country's square-jawed GIs, its earlier French incarnation was eclipsed, though more pressing military concerns meant that no one was fretting much about who wore what first, of course...
As HOLLYWOOD milked the public’s heightened wartime emotions to the hilt, morale-boosting news clips and epic movies alike featured real or make-believe soldiers, clad in white T-shirts galore. The look - conveying hunkiness, honesty and heroism - began to filter into the public domain.
In 1951, however, the pristine white T-shirt was cast with darker, more raunchy and rebellious overtones, sealing its subsequent iconic status. This palpable shift came courtesy of actor MARLON BRANDO squeezing his impressive upper half into one for the brutish role of STANLEY KOWALSKI in a film version of TENNESSEE WILLIAMS' A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE. BRANDO's look-at-me pecs appeal - his bulging muscles straining against a grease-splattered T - was unashamed and unabashed, film-goers wanted to look like him or to fuck him, or a combination of both. Disaffected teenagers homed in on BRANDO's sexy style gesture, adopting it as their own and further imbuing it with a youthful rebellion fit for the real world. In doing so, they fashioned a tangible gap between their own shiny new dress codes and those of a more modest, frumpy ilk, hitherto adhered to by their elders. BRANDO would go on to famously flaunt a tight white T-shirt once more on the screen, when he played motorbike outlaw JOHNNY in the 1954 film THE WILD ONE. By 1955, ELVIS PRESLEY was also rocking the same look, though it was JAMES DEAN, of course, who took it to its zenith in the same year, teaming a white T with blue jeans in REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE.
Throughout this era, the white T-shirt remained largely pure, uncluttered by adorning images or text - the only alteration being a pack of cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve. As a craze, it was still very much a "man thing". Around the time of the late 1950s, though, this began to change. Technological advances enabled the likes of WALT DISNEY to offer kiddy-friendly peel-on/peel-off designs to customise plain T-shirts. By the 1960s, tie-dyeing and screen printing techniques were being widely applied on to T-shirts that were bought in equal measure by men and women, in particular young adults opting out of mainstream society and beating a path to the hippy promised land. With the onset of the 1970s, bands and sports brands began gaily splashing their names and logos all over T-shirts: paradoxical-ly, those opting at the time to wear a plain white T. devoid of any such form of visual noise, began to seem boring and decidedly non-rebellious. This about-turn was further reinforced in the mid 70s, when subversives such as VIVIENNE WESTWOOD offered up sleeveless T-shirts adorned with chicken bones. feathers and pulp-type sloganeering, and again in the mid 80s, when KATHERINE HAM-NETT plastered withering political statistics and sound bites upon billowing oversized T-shirts, geared for unisex consumption but ultimately usurped in commercial terms by parodies merchandised by the likes of UK pop band FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD.
Hence, throughout the past few decades, good old-fashioned white T-shirts, worn in their own right, have been pretty much elbowed out of the way by other, more fanciful innovations and notions. For many men, these rather humble garments - in the original short sleeve, round neck format - have consequently gone back to merely being a form of underwear, often worn beneath a button-up shirt or jumper. So, although labels such as HANES, CALVIN KLEIN, RALPH LAUREN, ARMANI and FRUIT OF THE LOOM still do brisk business across the world - having gradually refined and improved the fit and fabric of original Army-era Ts - spotting equivalent numbers of men actually wearing any such "boring" items with pride is none too easy. Clearly, amid the style-aware "METRO-SEXUAL" and homosexual fraternities, it is the V-neck T-shirt with fake bullet holes and graffiti slogans (or a polo shirt in any shade other than white) that currently rules supreme, although an older clone-type gay, influenced in his adolescence by images of BRANDO and DEAN, or maybe even NICK KAMEN in the hugely successful 80s campaign for LEVI'S 501s, might still tend to reach for the classic white T.
Those men who determinedly continue to sheath themselves in this familiar yet overlooked classic, irrespective of age or body shape, are possessed of an appealing self-confidence which neutralises the hypnotic spell cast by the neurotic fashion industry. Some white T-shirt diehards have, no doubt, previously dabbled in dressing-to-impress, but eventually abstained from making complex aesthetic decisions altogether; others may simply never have entered into the STYLE WARS in the first place. Together, now, their ranks operate in neutral territory. Their stance fundamentally undermines our commonly-held belief that wearing the latest trends (or even better, creating them) automatically makes you interesting. Or fantastic.