T-shirt

It became common for sailors and Marines in work parties, the early submarines, and tropical climates to remove their uniform jacket, thus wearing (and soiling) only the undershirt.

[7] Following World War II, it was worn by Navy men as undergarments; gradually, veterans could be seen wearing their uniform trousers with their T-shirts as casual clothing.

The shirts became even more popular in the 1950s after Marlon Brando wore one in A Streetcar Named Desire, and they finally achieved status as fashionable, stand-alone, outerwear garments.

The rise of social media and video sharing sites led to the growth of tutorials on DIY T-shirt projects.

[10] Screen printed T-shirts have been a standard form of marketing for major American consumer products, such as Coca-Cola and Mickey Mouse, since the 1970s.

Since the 1990s, it has become common practice for companies of all sizes to produce T-shirts with their corporate logos or messages as part of their overall advertising campaigns.

Examples of designer T-shirt branding include Calvin Klein, FUBU, Ralph Lauren, American Apparel, and The Gap.

The early first decade of the 21st century saw the renewed popularity of T-shirts with slogans and designs, with a strong inclination to humor and/or irony.

The trend only increased later that decade, embraced by celebrities such as Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, and reflected back on them, too ('Team Aniston').

The political and social statements that T-shirts often display have become, since the first decade of the 21st century, one of the reasons that they have so deeply permeated different levels of culture and society.

Despite this, or perhaps due to it, companies like T-Shirt Hell (a T-shirt store known for offensive and shocking messages) and various other organizations have caught on to the statement-making trend (whether offensive or otherwise), including chain and independent stores, websites, schools, clubs, and groups of all kinds, with some even incorporating said trends into their respective business models.

[13] In the early 1950s, several companies based in Miami, Florida started decorating T-shirts with different resort names and various characters.

Founded in 1948 by owner Quentin H. Sandler, Sherry initially screen printed souvenir tourist scarves.

Ringer T-shirts are a solid-color shirt with bands of a second color around the collar and the lower edges of the sleeves, with or without an additional front decoration.

Psychedelic art poster designer Warren Dayton pioneered several political, protest, and pop-culture art pieces, printed large and in color on T-shirts featuring images of Cesar Chavez, political cartoons, and other cultural icons in an article in the Los Angeles Times magazine in late 1969 (ironically, the printing clothing company quickly cancelled the experimental line, fearing there would not be a market).

In the late 1960s, Richard Ellman, Robert Tree, Bill Kelly, and Stanley Mouse set up the Monster Company in Mill Valley, California to produce fine art designs expressly for T-shirts.

[14] Additionally, one of the most popular symbols to emerge from the political turmoil of the 1960s was the T-shirt bearing the face of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara.

Examples include bright yellow happy face, Rolling Stones "tongue and lips"[16] logo, and Milton Glaser's iconic "I ♥ N Y” designs.

In the mid-1980s, the white T-shirt became fashionable after the actor Don Johnson wore it with an Armani suit in the Miami Vice series.

Laser printers, using special toners containing sublimation dyes, can print designs on plain paper which can then be permanently heat-transferred to T-shirts.

In the 1980s, thermochromatic dyes were used to produce T-shirts that changed color when subjected to heat; Global Hypercolour was one of the most popular youth brands to do so in the US and UK.

Dye sublimation (also commonly referred to as all-over printing) came into widespread use in the 21st century, enabling some previously impossible designs.

The key feature of dye-sublimated clothing is that the design is not printed on top of the garment, but permanently dyed into the threads of the shirt, ensuring that it will never fade.

Dye sublimation is economically viable for small-quantity printing; the unit cost is similar for short or long production runs.

It is then printed on a purpose-made computer printer (as of 2016[update], most commonly Epson or Ricoh brands)[citation needed] using large heat presses to vaporize the ink directly into the fabric.

Designer Alexander Wang released variations of T-shirts from oversized scoop necks, tanks to striped, slouchy rayon jerseys.