The Origin of T-Shirts

Welcome to Becoming Sage, where the ordinary becomes extraordinary. My name is Elan Baumgarten and this is the first episode where we will take a look at the history of one of today’s most important garments, the T-Shirt. T-shirts can be traced back to the turn of the 19th-Century where we can find their earliest ancestor, the union suit. The union suit was a jumper, a full-length and one piece white suit made for laborers. People began cutting the arms off for more mobility and range of motion. After a few years, they started manufacturing these in two parts, with the top piece being designed to be tucked into the bottoms. The Cooper Underwear company would start marketing their shirts as the “Bachelor Shirt”. This special design lacked buttons, and instead was pulled over the head to avoid the need to sew replacement buttons on. A lot of the success of the T-Shirt can be attributed to the U.S. Navy who issued these Bachelor Shirts as an undergarment for their sailors. While they did have to wear the T-Shirt under their uniform, exceptions were made for hot weather at the discretion of officers. Some would even allow their sailors to wear the Bachelor Shirt without a uniform. By the time WW1 broke out the Army was also issuing these shirts to their soldiers, many of whom brought them home after the war. From here the shirts spread like wildfire as manufacturers began producing them in much more quantity. Even mothers would outfit their boys with the shirts. While this wasn’t a “common sight” until the 1940s, Merriam-Webster was the first dictionary to add “T-Shirt” to their list in the early 1920s. College football players would wear crew-neck T-Shirts under their Jerseys, and it eventually spread outside the realm of sports. Despite the popularity of the T-Shirt rapidly growing, they were still considered an undergarment with exceptions few and far between, like farmers and miners. It wasn’t until WW2 when soldiers came back wearing T-Shirts that it became a more acceptable overgarment for adults. In the 1960s graphic T-shirts started soaring in popularity as a form of wearable art. Throughout the next couple decades T-shirts would grow ever popular, with new printing methods being invented. The final major breakthrough in bringing modern America its most iconic clothing article was a blend of cotton and polyester that brought us the wrinkle-free T-Shirt, and thus the modern T-Shirt was born. Today over two billion T-Shirts are produced each year.
Thanks for listening to Becoming Sage, make sure to subscribe to continue hearing the common become extraordinary.