The three of us are at the self-checkout in Target paying for the birthday presents Atticus chose for his gifts from Grandma and Grandpa. (Yes, we could have secretly bought something we thought he might like and wrapped it up nicely, but he is 13 and birthday gift-buying rules have changed over the years.) One of the sales associates, a boy not much older than Atticus, says to him, “Nice shirt” pointing at the image of the 1980s video game Mario Brothers emblazoned on his T-shirt. Atticus smiles and a momentary bond is joined between the two.
Two days later I was in the Morgantown Post Office. The person at the counter was wearing a T-shirt with Mr. Zip racing across the front holding a letter. (Remember the 1960s character created to promote the new Zip Code?)
“I like your shirt,” I said to her. “It looks retro.” She smiled and told me it was just made to look that way. “It’s very cool,” I said as I was gathering my things to leave. I was wearing an old Paul McCartney concert tee at the time.
In the 1960s when I was turning 13, the T-shirt was still limited as a fashion accessory. By the time I entered high school, dress codes were being tweaked — at a glacial pace, we thought — but blue jeans and T-shirts were still considered a bit rough around the edges. They were not the type of clothes a nice boy would wear. After all, T-shirts had been considered underwear only a couple of decades earlier.
Oh, sure, you had the movies and Marlon Brando in his torn T-shirt yelling, “Hey, Stella,” but that just proved the point.
But as with so many customs and proprieties during that time, society’s position toward T-shirts changed over the next decades. They came out of the closet. The ‘60s was the decade of the tie-dyed shirt; the ‘70s of the concert T-shirt; by the 1980s statements and quotes ironic or otherwise appeared. Into this mix appeared T-shirts that served as cheap promotion for business.
Perhaps the biggest change was that women as well as men embraced the T-shirt. Today T-shirts are part of the wallpaper of American fashion. And as with so many things American, they adorn the rest of the world, as well.
Why has this particular clothing item become such a staple of our wardrobes? Dennis Nothdruft, curator of “Cult-Culture-Subversion,” an exhibition exploring the T-Shirt at the London Fashion and Textile Museum, suggests: “The T-shirt is a really basic way of telling the world who and what you are.”
T-shirts are bumper stickers or protest signs or Facebook posts. They are clues to strangers or acquaintances of your opinions, preferences, interests, sense of humor. They can be a declaration of sports team loyalty or a humble brag. (Been there; Done that; Got the T-shirt.) Tees are a simple way to connect with others.
I have too many tees, I admit. I periodically cull through my collection and select some to give away, but I still have way more than I need. I wear my favorite T-shirts until at some point they start looking like something I shouldn’t wear out in public. (That’s an interesting self-revelation: I still have standards for T-shirt wear, they just aren’t the same as the ones my elders had back in the 1960s.)
Eventually I assign the shabby T-shirts to my work-in-the-yard pile. After a time they are in such a paint-spattered, ripped and frayed condition that they go into the rag pile where they become all-purpose wipe-up cloths. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.
I try to limit my T-shirt purchases these days. “Less is more,” is my new motto. Come to think of it, that phrase would work on a T-shirt.
