The History of Tee Shirts

A t-shirt, or tee shirt is a shirt, usually buttonless, pocketless, and collarless, with a round neck and mostly short sleeved.

T-shirts are typically made of polyester fibres or cotton - or a mix of the two, knitted together in a jersey stitch that gives a t shirt its distinctive soft texture. T-shirts are often decorated with text and/or pictures, sometimes used to market. T-shirt fashions include styles for men and ladies, and for all ages, including baby, youth and adult sizes.

T-shirts have also become a medium for self-expression and advertising, with any imaginable combination of words, art and even photographs on display.

In the early 1950’s several companies based in Miami, Florida, began to decorate t-shirts with different resort names and characters. The first company was Tropix Togs, under founder Sam Kantor, in Miami.

They were the original licensee for Disney characters including Mickey Mouse and Davy Crockett. Later more companies expanded into the t-shirt printing business including the Sherry Manufacturing Company who were also based in Miami. Sherry started in 1948 by its owner and founder Quinton Sandler as a screen print scarf business but evolved into one of the largest screen printed resort and licensed apparel companies in America.

T-shirts typically extends to the waist, although one fashion is for “oversized” t-shirts that may extend down to the knees, namely in todays hip hop fashion. A more recent trend in women’s clothing involves tight-fitting “cropped” t shirts that are short enough to reveal the stomach. Another popular trend is wearing a “long-sleeved tshirts”, then putting on a short sleeved tee shirt of a different colour over the top of the long sleeved shirt. Known as “layering”.

According to archaeologists and anthropologists, the earliest clothes were most likely consisting of fur, leather, grass or leaves or , and were draped and wrapped or tied about the body for protection from the weather. Knowledge of such clothes remains uncertain, since clothes materials deteriorate quickly compared to stone, bone, shell and metal artifacts. Archeologists did identify very early sewing needles made of bone and ivory from around 30,000 BC, which were found near Kostenki, in the Soviet Union, in 1988.

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