By: Bimol Bee
Submitted: 2011-10-07 08:37:17 | Word Count: 490
Have you ever been interested in who the first person was to wear t-shirts and why they became so popular? Well, the history of a t-shirt takes its start in the early 1900s during the First World War. American soldiers noticed that the Europeans were wearing comfortable looking cotton shirts and they envied them as they had to be constantly wearing heavy wool uniforms. It has to be emphasized that cotton shirts shaped like the letter T took its beginning on the battlefield.
Another story sounds a bit differently. It says that t-shirts were first worn by Americans when navy sailors were sailing in the open sea. As you can see, there is a number of claims concerning the t-shirt's origin. Nevertheless, the truth is that at first t-shirts were worn as undershirts and weren't considered fashionable. By the way, they were specially designed for a college football team to serve as sweat absorbers.
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Many people consider that t-shirts got their name because of their shape, but still there are other claims. They say they were used as "training shirts" as they were mostly worn by training soldiers. One more claim says that "tee" is shortened for "amputee" connected with the short sleeves. It's surprising how these claims appeared and make sense but nobody is aware of the real truth. The only thing's true: t-shirts were worn as undershirts.
At older times, it seemed funny if someone was wearing a t-shirt as an overshirt. Wearing a t-shirt was unacceptable to society as well as walking down the block with nothing but boxers on. And only after the second World War people began to accept the t-shirt as we do today. At that period of time t-shirts were used during presidential campaigns.
But truly popular t-shirts became after being worn by pop culture individuals including James Dean and Marlon Brando on the big screen. The t-shirt became the status symbol and many people wanted to look like these guys.
Later on, t-shirts were produced of different types of designs and pictures depicted on them. One could find tourist t-shirts and extremely popular cartoon character t-shirts. The popularity of the t-shirt was rising extremely quickly, especially with famous rock bands and other celebrities wearing them. Such a trend like tye dying appeared in the 1960s, which was followed by a fashionable trend of message t-shirts, which were founded in the United Kingdom in the late 80s. There are t-shirts having LED lights integrated into their fabrics.
Nowadays, we can't imagine our lives and clothing without the t-shirts which are today one of the most popular pieces of clothing, and probably the most frequently worn garment in the world. Each day thousands of t-shirts are manufactured in many countries due to the contemporary technology and new t-shirt lovers. It's expected that the t-shirt is going to grow in popularity and variety of designs in future becoming the undisputed best clothing product.
