And you wore it well
If you lived though rock’s golden age and all you got was that lousy Genesis T-shirt, don’t despair: you could be the owner of a valuable cultural artefact. Paul Morley remembers the time when merchandising actually meant something
As you slip into your favourite Sunday T-shirt, consider how much history is pressed into the garment and how much the image, logo or slogan that is, or isn’t, on the front, explains about your age, sex and cultural preferences.
You are dressing yourself in history and opening yourself up to interpretation. T-shirts as we know them - basic T-shaped undershirts that became over-garments once teenage fashion kicked in after the Second World War, took their shape in the late 19th century.
Legend has it that sailors, about to be inspected by Queen Victoria, were ordered to add sleeves to their working vests so that she would not have to face their hairy armpits.
By 1913, American sailors were wearing something that resembled our idea of a T-shirt underneath their itchy uniforms. At the end of the 1920s, the word ‘T-shirt’, already used by F. Scott Fitzgerald in his novel This Side of Paradise, made it into Webster’s Dictionary. Souvenir T-shirts promoting The Wizard of Oz in 1939 became instant collector’s items.
An American soldier featured on the cover of Life in July 1942 sporting a T-shirt
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