Nothing can compete in destruction with a world war, but in no other historical period have so many scientific advances been achieved. The first computer, the radar, the jet engine, the ballpoint pen, atomic energy... All these discoveries arose in a moment of crisis to counteract a fearsome enemy who was also fighting to the limit of his strength for his survival. The T-shirt, one of those great inventions in the History of Humanity, was born in the muddy trenches of the Great War, on the French front, and its protagonists were the soldiers of the US Expeditionary Force.
According to what Ingrid Mendelsohn, from the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, states in her studies on this garment, those annoying and heavy undergarments —the one-piece Long Johns— did not facilitate the hard work of the troops, so underwear soon caught her attention. that the Gallic infantrymen, their comrades-in-arms in that fight, wore: a kind of cotton vest that was complemented by short breeches. In other words, two light pieces that are easy to wash and comfortable to wear. Faced with such a discovery, the Yankees cut off their long breeches at the French waist. The resulting upper garment was shaped like a capital T and can be considered the mother of today's T-shirt. In 1918, when World War I ended and soldiers returned to the US, they took their new outfits with them and made them America's new men's undergarment. The classic Long Johns were left for old men and Westerns.
Transgressive and rebellious, cheap and timeless, versatile and adaptable, battle uniform and business card, its design has changed our way of dressing and almost of thinking. Its use marks the ideological transition from the 19th to the 20th century: the voice of the shirt is that of individualism.
Of course, there are also those who claim that his birth comes from much earlier. According to the historian Harold Lipson in his work The British Story, the sailors of the British Royal Navy already used, in the early years of the 20th century, thick cotton jackets to combat the cold. This garment was part of the uniform of the crews of warships and submarines, but it did not have sleeves or its characteristic capital T shape. For his part, Vicent Minetti, an expert in fashion history at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, contextualizes the appearance of the t-shirt as a civilian garment in the 1920s, just at the time when chimneys ceased to be massively used. and central heating is installed in homes. "Thus, the warm one-piece briefs are extinct in favor of light two-piece underwear: a tank top and briefs," says Minetti.
In those years, workers and athletes quickly adopted the garment. Companies like Hanes, Fruit of the Loom, Roebuck & Co and Sears set out to conquer a virgin market that was eager for change. The Nazis copied its design and imposed it as a gym uniform for their Hitler Youth. And in World War II it was already part of the official uniform of sailors, soldiers and pilots of all armies. On July 13, 1942, he made the cover of an illustrated magazine for the first time: Life published a photograph showing a soldier flexing muscle under a T-shirt with the sign Air Corps Gunnery School. Las Vegas.
But it would be the avant-garde Coco Chanel who would become one of those responsible for this inner change to become the most used outer garment on the planet. In the 1940s, with longer sleeves —French— and with her characteristic sailor stripes, she championed a metamorphosis that would lead, according to her, "to the best erotic presentation of oneself". The cinema, that great showcase of stars and trends, had in Marlon Brando the actor who has done the most to take the classic white T-shirt out of the underwear drawer and dress it showing off muscle. His interpretation of Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (Elia Kazan, 1951) catapulted him into the category of a living myth and helped prop up the image of outsiders for all those who wore undershirts under their leather jackets. Something similar happened with James Dean, another youth icon who appeared in Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955) with a model similar to the one Brando wore. Later, this anti-establishment attitude was reinforced thanks to Peter Fonda and his image as an indomitable biker in Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1966).
In the 60s, key figures such as Edie Sedgwick —the girl of the moment, who combined it with skinny pants—, the singer Jim Morrison or a very young Mick Jagger imposed it among young people as a cool element that broke with the moth-eaten outfits of previous generations. . In addition, phenomena such as the irruption of surfing on the beaches of California —the shirt is essential in the uniform of surfers—, the sexual revolution or the universalization of television as a fuse for fashions and trends triggered sales among the general public, which which caused a greater offer of cuts, sizes, shapes and colors. "The shirt is so versatile in terms of forms and uses that it has ceased to be a garment to become a social symbol. It is an exponent of freedom, in a double sense: it allows freedom of movement, because it is a very comfortable shape of covering the body, and freedom of ideas", affirms Miguel Ángel Pascual, director of the Superior Center of Fashion Design of the Polytechnic University of Madrid.
Policies. The t-shirt had its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s. It was adopted from musical idols like Elvis Presley to social leaders like Angela Davis. They were used as banners to protest (for the feminist cause, for equal rights for African-Americans, in favor of the May 68 riots in Paris...). At that time, an emblematic T-shirt was born that is still sold today as a symbol of freedom: the one printed with the face of Che Guevara. In the 80s, they were appropriated by punk groups like the Sex Pistols and The Ramones, who made them the official uniform of urban tribes around the world.
Along the way, throughout its short history, it has also been losing fabric and sticking more and more to the body. The objective? Highlight curves or attenuate them, show the right amount of flesh, insinuate in some cases, provoke in many others... The film Abyss (The Deep, 1977) offered its peak in an opening sequence in which Jacqueline Bisset came out of the water with a soaked t-shirt that let the viewer guess its charms under the fabric. Today, the miss wet t-shirt contests in, for example, some Benidorm nightclubs are indebted to that lewd scene.
Its more political aspect began in 1948, when it was used for the first time as an advertising medium in an electoral campaign. It was in the US and Thomas E. Dewey and Harry Truman faced each other at the polls. The slogan Dew it for Dewey (Spray everything with Dewey) looked on the front of those t-shirts to ask for the Republican vote. In 1952, Eisenhower - with the slogan I like Ike (I like Ike) - copied a formula that would later proliferate in the rallies of politicians around the world. From Patagonia to Siberia, there is no candidate who does not have the t-shirt as a means of propaganda. On the other hand, the first copy for publicity purposes — apart from the electoral ones — could be seen for the first time in Jean Luc Goddard's film At the end of the escapade (1959), where a beautiful Jean Seberg with garçon-style hair walks around Paris delivering newspapers wearing a Herald Tribune t-shirt.
Since the 1960s, the most prestigious designers have been the ones who have infinitely metamorphosed its format: in 1962, Christian Dior introduced it for the first time in its Haute Couture collection. André Courrèges and Yves Saint Laurent, in the 1970s, launched them on the catwalks with the logos of their firms to capture the attention of women, who had begun to use them as an outer garment in the 1950s. At the end of the 1980s, Adolfo Domínguez He gave it another twist by combining it with a blazer to free men from the uncomfortable trinomial suit-shirt-tie. His best creation was called Sonny Crockett, the character played by Don Johnson for the Miami Vice series. Jean Paul Gautier reinvented it in the 90s thanks to his marine designs. Giorgio Armani uses it as a fetish cloth in all his parades to the point that he himself does not wear anything other than white or black shirts. In the mid-90s, the Spaniard Custo Dalmau introduced the concept of customization thanks to his groundbreaking and colorful style. His T-shirts conquered the American market when the stylists of television series such as Friends or Sex and the City began to dress their actors with Custo models.
Deal. Furthermore, according to expert Pietra Rivoli in her book The Travels of a T-shirt in the Global Economy, no other article better defines the capitalist relationship between Western powers and developing countries. The cotton with which it is manufactured is extracted from plantations in the southern United States, which dominates most of the market. Then, he travels to the factories on the outskirts of Shanghai, in China, a country that currently produces more than 360 million cotton T-shirts a year. Again they return to the first world for sale, a business that amounts to 500 million euros a year throughout the planet, where there are more than a billion and a half units in circulation. Only in our country, for example, 70% of men and 40% of women have more than 10 units in their possession. Finally, those that we discard in the West return to Africa and Asia to become part of the second-hand market.
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