The "Evolution" of labels on the clothes.

The "Evolution" of labels on the clothes

A T-shirt is a style of fabric shirt, named after the T shape of the body and sleeves. It is normally associated with short sleeves, a round neck line known as a crew neck, with no collar Typically made of cotton fibers knitted in a jersey stitch, they have a distinctive soft texture compared to woven shirts. The majority of modern versions have a body made from a continuously woven tube, on a circular loom, so that the torso has no side seams. The manufacture of T-shirts has become highly automated, and may include fabric cutting by laser or water jet.

Inscriptions on the clothes appeared many centuries ago. And the earliest ones were originated in ancient Greece. Then they could be seen on a variety of Italian and German portraits of the XV and XVI centuries, inscriptions woven into the pattern of men's shirts, women's dresses in corsages which were typically written in Latin. The inscriptions were also presented in mottos of a noble family, or names of the owners of these portraits or dresses.

The word T-shirt became part of American English by the 1920s, and appeared in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Following World War II, it became common to see veterans 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, finally achieving status as fashionable, stand-alone, outerwear garments. Often boys wore them while doing chores and playing outside, eventually opening up the idea of wearing them as general-purpose casual clothing.

Printed T-shirts were in limited use by 1942 when an Air Corps Gunnery School T-shirt appeared on the cover of Life magazine. In the 1960s, printed T-shirts gained popularity for self-expression as well for advertisements, protests, and souvenirs. T-shirts with bold slogans were popular in the UK in the 1980s 

Current versions are available in many different designs and fabrics, and styles include crew-neck and V-neck shirts.