Vive Le T-Shirt

The History of The T-shirt.

There is no record for when the first T-shirt was produced, but there is documentation dating back to as early as 1913 that the US Navy adopted the crew-necked, short-sleeved, white undershirt, to be worn under overalls.

In the beginning t-shirts were worn as an undergarment. However, many working men wore a sleeveless undershirt called a "singlet," or a single-piece "union suit" almost into the 1940's. In the late 1930's Hanes, Sears, and Fruit of the Loom started to market the T-shirt. In 1934 the T-shirt received a setback, hen Clark Gable took off his dress shirt to reveal a bare torso in the movie It Happened One Night. American women liked the bare-chest look, and many men followed Gable's lead by discarding their undershirts in droves.

The t-shirt got a real boost from underwear to outerwear when Marlon Brando showed his form in a tight-fitting T-shirt the 1951 movie, ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’.

Brando's iconic tight T-shirt had to be made specially, as one could not buy fitted T-shirts at the time; a regular T-shirt was bought, it was washed several times and its back was sewn in order to tighten it for Brando.

Marlon Brando again set the stage with his T-shirt and jeans rebel in a the 1954 movie ‘The Wild One’, and his cultural partner James Dean continued the look in 1955 with the classic movie ‘Rebel without a Cause’. Elvis was also making his way onto the world scene with his hip T-shirt and leather jacket.