T-Shirt Evolution
There was a time, in the ancient annals of our forefathers, when things were much different then they are now. There were not modern conveniences like microwaves and cell phones. There were no such things as home computers or the Internet. Yes, this ancient time was a time of our grandparents. When men were men, and women wore high-heels in the kitchen while they cooked for their unappreciative men. Things have changed so much, that you can look at something so simple as t-shirts and see the way they have morphed into something completely different over the course of just a few years.
When our grandparents were fighting World Wars and drinking whiskey for lunch, they were wearing t-shirts while they were doing it. Yes, the t-shirts were plain white, made of 100% cotton, and were worn as underwear…but they were still t-shirts. Can you imagine a time when t-shirts were seen as the same as a pair of tightie-whities? I guess we should be grateful that briefs never took off as a great form of outerwear, right? Our grandparents have seen huge changes in the world of t-shirts. The evolution of the t-shirt has been a fast one indeed.
T-shirts stayed pretty much the same until the 60′s when counter-culture took the reigns. Hippies did all kinds of crazy hippie magic, until the tie-dyed t-shirt was born. Tie-dyed t-shirts were a huge hit, and you can still find them at jam-band concert parking lots today. This is a moment in time when t-shirts started saying something about their owners, even if that something was that they smelled like patchouli oil and body odor. Some movements were not meant to continue, is all I’m saying.
Now we fast-forward to the 80′s when we saw a war being fought over the ownership of t-shirts. Did t-shirts belong to corporate America, or to the growing members of the punk-rock movement? The punk rockers in America used black markers to scrawl homemade declarations of sarcastic war against corporations and the government while those same corporations used t-shirts as free advertisement. I have never seen someone turn down a free t-shirt, even if that free t-shirt has Mountain Dew logos all over it. Needless to say, the victory went where the money is…and punks were never known to be particularly affluent.
Today, people use t-shirts for all manner of purposes. There are t-shirts out there that look like stunning works of art. There are also t-shirts for sale that are so filthy that you expect the tag to say “Made of 100% Feces.” There is no real telling where the next t-shirt trend will come from or how it will change t-shirts in the future. All we can count on is that t-shirts are going to change, just like they’ve changed since the 1950′s when the Fonz was sporting them. When we are old and gray, we’re probably going to hate t-shirts too.
There is a great site about t-shirts which can be found at t-shirts where you can see how it’s done right.
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