Back view of a woman's Wikipedia globe shirt

Comic book creator Valerie D’Orazio at the November 2008 Big Apple Convention in Manhattan

A T-shirt (T shirt or tee) is a style of shirt. A T-shirt is buttonless and collarless, usually with short sleeves and frequently a round neck line.

T-shirts are typically made of cotton fibers (sometimes others), knitted together in a jersey stitch that gives a T-shirt its distinctive soft texture. T-shirts can be decorated with text and/or pictures, and they are often used to advertise (see human billboard), promoting products, companies, films and websites.

T-shirt fashions include many styles for both men and women, and for all age groups, including baby, youth, teen, adult and elderly sizes.

The T-shirt evolved from undergarments used in the 19th century, through cutting the one-piece "union suit" underwear into separate top and bottom garments, with the top long enough to tuck under the waistband of the bottoms. T-shirts, with and without buttons, were adopted by miners and stevedores during the late 19th century as a convenient covering for hot environments.

T-shirts, as a slip-on garment without buttons, originally became popular in the United States when they were issued by the U.S. Navy during or following the Spanish American War. These were a crew-necked, short-sleeved, white cotton undershirt to be worn under a uniform. It became common for sailors and Marines in work parties, the early submarines, and tropical climates to remove their uniform "jacket", wearing (and soiling) only the undershirt.^[1]

Named the T-shirt due to the shape of the garment's outline, it soon became popular as a bottom layer of clothing for workers in various industries, including agriculture. The T-shirt was easily fitted, easily cleaned, and inexpensive, and for this reason it became the shirt of choice for young boys. Boys' shirts were made in various colors and patterns. By the Great Depression, the T-shirt was often the default garment to be worn when doing farm or ranch chores, as well as other times when modesty called for a torso covering but conditions called for lightweight fabrics.^[1]

World War II[link]

Following World War II, it became common to see veterans wearing their uniform trousers with their T-shirts as casual clothing, and they became even more popular in the 1950s after Marlon Brando wore one in A Streetcar Named Desire, finally achieving status as fashionable, stand-alone, outer-wear garments.^[2]

In the mid-1980s, the white T-shirt became fashionable after the actor Don Johnson wore it with an Armani suit in Miami Vice.^[1]

They can also be used to carry commercial advertising, souvenir messages and protest art messages. Beginning in the late 1960s, the T-shirt became a medium for wearable art. Psychedelic art poster designer Warren Dayton pioneered several political, protest, and pop-culture art 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.

Today, many notable and memorable T-shirts produced in the 1970s have now become ensconced in pop culture. Examples include the bright yellow happy face T-shirts, The Rolling Stones tops with their "tongue and lips"^[3] logo, and Milton Glaser's iconic "I ♥ N Y” design.

Trends[link]

A T-shirt with a protest art message on it in the mid-2000s.

T-shirts were originally worn as undershirts. Now T-shirts are worn frequently as the only piece of clothing on the top half of the body, other than possibly a bra or an undershirt (vest). T-shirts have also become a medium for self-expression and advertising, with any imaginable combination of words, art, and even photographs on display.^[4]

A T-shirt typically extends to the waist. Variants of the T-shirt, like the tank top, crew neck, A-shirt (with the nickname "wife beater"), muscle shirt, scoop neck, and V-neck have been developed. Hip hop fashion calls for "tall-T" T-shirts which may extend down to the knees. A 1990s trend in women's clothing involved tight-fitting "cropped" T-shirts short enough to reveal the midriff. Another popular trend is wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt of a contrasting color over a long-sleeved T-shirt. This is known as "layering". T-shirts that are tight to the body are called fitted, tailored or "baby doll" t-shirts.

Decoration[link]

An example of a tie-dyed T-shirt.

T-shirts with bold slogans were popular in the UK in the 1980s.

A Taiwanese`s T-shirt

In the early 1950s several companies based in Miami, Florida, started to decorate T-shirts with different resort names and various characters. The first company was Tropix Togs, under founder Sam Kantor, in Miami. They were the original license for Walt Disney characters that included Mickey Mouse and Davy Crockett. Later, other companies expanded into the T-shirt printing business, including Sherry Manufacturing Company, also based in Miami. Sherry started in 1948 by its owner and founder Quinton Sandler as a screen print scarf business and evolved into one of the largest screen printed resort and licensed apparel companies in the United States.

In 1959, plastisol, a more durable and stretchable ink, was invented, allowing much more variety in T-shirt designs.

In the 1960s, the ringer T-shirt appeared and became a staple fashion for youth and rock-n-rollers. The decade also saw the emergence of tie-dyeing and screen-printing on the basic T-shirt. 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. Monster T-shirts often feature emblems and motifs associated with the Grateful Dead and marijuana culture.^[5] Additionally, one of the most popular symbols to emerge out of the political turmoil of 1960s were T-shirts bearing the face of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara.^[6]

Screen printing[link]

The most common form of commercial T-shirt decoration is screen-printing. In screen-printing, a design is separated into individual colors. Plastisol or water based inks are applied to the shirt through mesh screens which limits the areas where ink is deposited. In most commercial T-shirt printing, the specific colors in the design are used. To achieve a wider color spectrum with a limited number of colors, process printing (using only cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink) or simulated process (using only white, black, red, green, blue, and gold ink) is effective. Process printing is best suited for light colored shirts. Simulated process is best suited for dark colored shirts. Very few companies continue to use water-based inks on their shirts. The majority of other companies that create shirts prefer to use plastisol due to the ability to print on varying colors without the need for color adjustment at the art level.

Specialty inks trend in and out of fashion and include shimmer, puff, discharge, and chino based inks. A metallic foil can be heat pressed and stamped onto any plastisol ink. When combined with shimmer ink, metallics give a mirror like effect wherever the previously screened plastisol ink was applied. Specialty inks are more expensive to purchase as well as screen and tend to appear on garments in boutiques.

Other methods of decoration used on T-shirts include airbrush, applique, embroidery, impressing or embossing, and the ironing on of either flock lettering, heat transfers, or dye-sublimation transfers. Laser printers are capable of printing on plain paper using a special toner containing sublimation dyes 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. The Global Hypercolour brand of these was a common sight on the streets of the UK for a few years, but has since mostly disappeared. These were also very popular in the United States among teenagers in the late 1980s. A downside of color-change garments is that the dyes can easily be damaged, especially by washing in warm water, or dye other clothes during washing.

At the turn of the 21st century, designing custom T-shirts online became more popular. Popular websites began to use digital printing (such as Direct to Garment or DTG printing) to allow customers to design their own T-shirts online with no minimum orders.^{[citation needed]}

Expressive messages[link]

Since the 1980s, T-shirts have flourished as a form of personal expression.^[4]

Screen printed T-shirts have been a standard form of marketing for major consumer products, such as Coca-Cola and Mickey Mouse, since the 1970s. However, 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. Since the late 1980s and especially the 1990s, T-shirts with prominent designer-name logos have become popular, especially with teenagers and young adults. These garments allow consumers to flaunt their taste for designer brands in an inexpensive way, in addition to being decorative. Examples of designer T-shirt branding include Calvin Klein, FUBU, Ralph Lauren and The Gap. These examples also include representations of rock bands, among other obscure pop-culture references. Licensed T-shirts are also extremely popular. Movie and TV T-shirts can have images of the actors, logos, and funny quotes from the movie or TV show. Often, the most popular T-shirts are those that characters wore in the film itself (e.g., Bubba Gump from Forrest Gump and Vote For Pedro from Napoleon Dynamite). Designer Katharine Hamnett, in the early 1980s, pioneered outsize T-shirts with large-print slogans. The early first decade of the 21st century saw the renewed popularity of T-shirts with slogans and designs with a strong inclination to the humorous and/or ironic. The trend has only increased later in this decade, embraced by celebrities, such as Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, and reflected back on them, too ('Team Aniston').^{[citation needed]} 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.^{[citation needed]} The statements also may be found to be offensive, shocking, or pornographic to some. Many different organizations have caught on to the statement-making trend, including chain and independent stores, websites, and schools. A popular phrase on the front of T-shirts demonstrating T-shirts' popularity among tourists is the humorous phrase "I did _____ and all I got was this lousy T-shirt." Examples include "My parents went to Las Vegas and all I got was this lousy T-shirt." T-shirt exchange is an activity where people trade their T-shirts they are wearing.

Artists like Bill Beckley, Glen Baldridge and Peter Klashorst use T-shirts for their artistic expression.

World record[link]

The current holder of the Guinness World Record for "Most T-shirts Worn at Once" with 257 T-shirts is Sanath Bandara^[7]. The record was set in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on December 22, 2011. The record was attempted on stage in front of a crowd of people in a public park in Colombo. Bandara surpassed previous record-holder Hwang Kwanghee from South Korea, who had held the record at 252 shirts.

See also[link]

Look up t-shirt in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: T-shirts

• Concert T-shirt
• Football kit
• Inkjet transfer
• Long-sleeved T-shirt
• Polo shirt
• Printed T-shirt
• Protest art
• Raglan sleeve
• Replica
• Wet T-shirt contest

References[link]

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (August 2010)

Adina Howard (born November 14, 1974) is an American R&B singer who rose to prominence during the mid 1990s with her debut album, Do You Wanna Ride? and her debut single, "Freak Like Me". Howard is known for her sexual image and provocative songs. Some of her other minor hits include "What's Love Got To Do With It?" (w/Warren G), "(Freak) And U Know It," "Nasty Grind," and the fan favorite "T-Shirt & Panties."

Career[link]

Her debut album Do You Wanna Ride?, featuring the #2 Platinum selling hit single, "Freak Like Me," was released in 1995 and was certified Gold by the RIAA. Remixed versions of "My Up And Down" and "It's All About You" were also released as singles.

A second album, Welcome to Fantasy Island, garnered critical raves and a moderate hit with the lead single, "(Freak) And U Know It," but was shelved by Elektra Records in 1997. The album was leaked to the internet a few years later and promotional copies sell for hundreds of dollars on eBay. In 1997, she collaborated with Jamie Foxx on the slow jam, "T-Shirt & Panties" which was originally slated for the soundtrack to his film Booty Call. However, the song ended up on the soundtrack to the 1998 feature film Woo. During this time, she made her feature film debut in the independent film High Freakquency, starring Deon Richmond and John Witherspoon.

In 2002, she filmed her second movie role, in the still-unreleased Casanova's Demise for director Tigre Hill.^[1]

By 2004, Howard released her third album The Second Coming on Rufftown Records. A video for the first single, "Nasty Grind", played on BET during early morning hours. The album sold poorly due to lack of promotion and only managed to gather 40,000 copies on store shelves and she was later sued by the label. A second single, "(Outside) The Club" was slated to be released, along with a remix album The Second Coming: UnCut but cancelled following her departure from the label.

In 2006, she announced a new single "Phone Sex" was going to be released, but the following year, the song "L.O.V.A." was released digitally as her lead single. Additionally, a song titled "Hips" was slated to be her second single.

Her fourth album, Private Show was delayed many times by Arsenal Records, almost to the point of being shelved.^[2] However, it was released on June 26, 2007 along with a promotional single "Picture This." The album managed to reach #17 on the iTunes R&B music chart, and has since sold 4000+ copies^[3] to date. Following the album's release, a remixes EP for "My Hips" (appears as "Hips" on her album) was released on iTunes & other digital services in December.^[4] A third official single, "Tease" was slated to be released, but as Howard parted ways with the label shortly after the album's release, it was cancelled.

In 2008, she appeared in the short film Poke the Sleeping Bear which won the Grand Jury Award at the 2008 Solstice Film Festival.^[5]

On September 25, 2009 a UK compilation Independent Soul Divas 2 was released on Lola Waxx Records. This compilation album featured "What Do I Do," a song recorded by Howard in 2008. The album version is a different than the version that was originally included on Howard's MySpace page. The song was a slight departure to what Adina's fans may be accustomed to but picked up airplay and positive response on UK Radio.

As of 2011, she is currently working on her Culinary Arts degree as well as an upcoming cookbook, an untitled fifth studio album, and a restaurant in Austin, TX.^[6]

In a series of radio interviews in 2012, Howard announced that the lead single for her upcoming album is a track called "2 Close" and that her album will follow once she finishes her schooling.^[7][8]

Personal life[link]

Howard announced in mid-2011 that she got engaged and that fans could attend the wedding engagement party.^[9] She married Sherman Jordan on October 3, 2011.^[10]

Discography[link]

Studio Albums[link]

Singles[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Biography portal

• Adina's Official MySpace Page
• Adina Howard at the Internet Movie Database