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    The Art of the Band T-shirt
    The Art of the Band T-shirt
    The Art of the Band T-shirt
    Ebook244 pages55 minutes

    The Art of the Band T-shirt

    By Amber Easby and Henry Oliver

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    About this ebook

    ONCE,

    T-shirts were just unadorned undergarments. But with the evolution of screen printing and the birth of band merchandising, T-shirts became so much cooler. Now every band with an ounce of savvy knows the importance of T-shirts not only as a lucrative sideline but also as a means of self- promotion and a way for fans to show their allegiance.

    The Art of the Band T-shirt is a visual history of that perennial fashion statement, complete with nearly two hundred images of the most important, influential, iconic, and ironic T-shirts. It includes shirt images from artists as diverse as Led Zeppelin, the Ramones, Madonna, Morrissey, Public Enemy, and the Flaming Lips, each with a caption that includes historical background, little-known facts, or an artist's comments about the design.

    A fascinating, beautifully illustrated archive for hipsters, fashionistas, serious collectors, and all music fans, The Art of the Band T-shirt is as indispensable and classically cool as the perfect T-shirt.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGallery Books
    Release dateJun 26, 2007
    ISBN9781416947554
    The Art of the Band T-shirt
    Author

    Amber Easby

    Amber Easby is an award-winning producer of short films and music videos. Some of her most notable works were music videos with The Naked and Famous and Lorde's Royals, which won a MTV Video Music Award. 

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      Book preview

      The Art of the Band T-shirt - Amber Easby

      Introduction

      A Brief History of the T-shirt

      Like most histories, the history of the T-shirt is full of parallel stories and competing points of view. Both U.S. and British navies, among others, claim its origins. Some claim that the T-shirt was conceived in the 1880s by the U.S. Navy. The uniform included a white button-up flannelette undershirt that was often worn by itself once the ship was out to sea, and sailors required clothing more flexible and comfortable than their standard uniforms to perform more laborious tasks. Although there had been button-up flannelette underwear for years, this is often thought of as the first official outing of undergarments worn as overwear.

      Around the same time on the other side of the Atlantic, others claim that the T-shirt had its origin in the woolen singlets of the British Royal Navy. The story goes that upon hearing that Queen Victoria would make a surprise inspection, an officer noticed that the singlets failed to cover up the sailors’ tattoos and ordered that sleeves be added to the garment to cover them up for the royal visit. Although this seems a little ridiculous and no real documents of the visit seem to have been found, the legend lives on.

      What is certain, though, is that in 1913 the U.S. Navy officially added to its uniform a buttonless, woolen crew neck undershirt. According to many, it was during the First World War that the U.S. soldiers noticed that the lighter cotton undershirts worn by the French soldiers were cooler in the summer and dried more quickly in the winter. The cotton T-shirt was on its way.

      While gaining steady momentum throughout the 1930s, the T-shirt received a major setback in the film It Happened One Night when Clark Gable took off his shirt to reveal no undershirt at all. Women throughout the United States loved the look of the bare chest, and men across the country followed suit by wearing nothing under their shirts. But the T-shirt’s resilient popularity recovered and began to populate mail-order catalogues nationwide. In 1938 Fruit of the Loom and Hanes both started mass-manufacturing T-shirts, and Sears, Roebuck and Co. advertised its gob shirt as an under- or outer garment and priced it at twenty-four cents.

      By the Second World War, the T-shirt was standard issue in both the army and the navy. Its military usage made the T-shirt a symbol of masculinity and strength while still being comfortable and versatile. As World War Two spread to the heat of the Pacific, the T-shirt became the predominant uniform of U.S. soldiers. While the white T-shirts were suitable for life in the navy, army soldiers soon realized the white T-shirts made them an easily visible target, so they dyed their shirts with coffee grinds until the Army brought in sage-green T-shirts late in the war.

      Media coverage of the war beamed images of these soldiers into households nationwide, giving much of the country their first look at what would soon be the most popular clothing in the world. It was also during the war that soldiers began to print their own T-shirts. Using screen printing and stenciling for the first time made T-shirts as much a message board as a piece of clothing. Soldiers would print T-shirts with their station post, corps, or point of origin. In 1942 a Life magazine cover featured a muscular soldier, gun in hand, ready for action, proudly wearing a T-shirt with the print Air Corps Gunnery School Las Vegas Nevada. It was with this cover that the future of the humble T-shirt became apparent.

      In the 1950s the T-shirt really came into its own. In the 1951 film A Streetcar Named Desire, Marlon Brando showed the world his physique in a tight-fitting white T-shirt. This perpetuated the T-shirt’s shift from hiding under the shirt to being the shirt, and it was only going to get more popular. In 1953 Brando again sported the new jeans-and-T-shirt look in the film The Wild One, and in 1955 teenagers found their hero in James Dean’s portrayal of a disaffected youth in Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause. Rebel Without a Cause quickly made the T-shirt a symbol of the new generation. No longer just young adults, children in smaller versions of their parents’ clothes, these teenagers were the epitome of new American youth. Young people with disposable income

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