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all the latest information about our online store, trending styles, and pretty much anything geek!
With that said, in honor of our first blog post, we found it
only appropriate to provide our t-shirt enthusiast community with a quick historical lesson . . .
The Invention of the T-Shirt
- It was thought that the t-shirt
evolved from a kind of all-in-one underwear made from red flannel known as the
“union suit” which was popular with workers in the 19th century.
- People making these type of
undergarments began experimenting with fabrics that could stretch back
into shape to make the product more comfortable. This resulted in the
creation of button-less undershirts made from wool and cotton that you could
pull over your head without ruining the collar.
- At the time, there were even laws in places stating that it
was illegal to wear these pullover tops exposed in public. These pullovers were
strictly meant to be used an undergarment.
- However, the fate of what would become the t-shirt began to
change in 1904, when the Cooper Underwear Company
began marketing them to single men as “bachelor undershirts”
with a tagline that simply read: “No safety pins — no buttons
— no needle — no thread".
- Shortly after this advertisement ran (about a year), the US
Navy, who employed many young bachelors with limited sewing skills, officially
incorporated the button-less white undershirt into its uniform.
- The undershirt then came to the attention of other military
branches and within a few years, during WWI, the undershirts were soon worn by
tens of thousands of soldiers, many of whom took the fashion home with them.
- By the time WWII started, the “modern” t-shirt had become
commonplace in high schools and universities across the states, though it
wasn’t yet ubiquitous and was still commonly worn by adults, at least, as an
undershirt. It got its iconic name from its shape resembling the
letter "T".
- T-shirt popularity further surged thanks to Marlon
Brando and his role as Stanley Kowalski in the 1951 movie A Street Car Named Desire which
featured Brando wearing a tight fitting, bicep caressing t-shirt. Brando’s
performance caused a nationwide spike in sales of t-shirts, proving to the world
that the t-shirt could be a “sexy, stand-alone, outer-wear garment".
And as they say, the rest is history…
The basic tee, after all, is the
simplest, easiest piece of clothing imaginable—its blank-page quality functions
like an easel on which we can project our imagination and self-expression.
Wear your shirt with
pride! Shop tees geek!
Source Credit: Smallwood, Karl http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/10/surprisingly-recent-invention-t-shirt
