Beyond the classic T shape, graphic tees have become a most popular medium for self expression. Whether proclaiming advertisement, activism, pop art, science, technology, or humor, it is the unique advantage that the tee has gained over other apparels.
While Marlon Brando was looking hot in his ringer tee in the 1960’s, companies such as Coca-Cola and Disney began screen printing advertisements onto t-shirts. It then became fashionable to convey political ideologies and activism on the tee. Communism put fear into the government, but out on the streets, it was hip and contemporary. The Marxist revolutionary, Che Guevara, had his face, square and frontal, splashed on many a tee. Andy Warhol’s banana, featured on The Velvet Underground & Nico album cover, is an iconic pop art image printed on the tee. Also made popular by the hippie movement are other decoration techniques such as tie-dyeing, which originates from Japan, India, and Africa.
Today, from public institutions, companies, designers, celebrities, to artists, everyone hands out t-shirts covered with their images and messages. Methods and techniques to make graphic tees have multiplied many folds, producing artworks with complex color schemes and details. T-shirts utilizing cutting-edge printing technologies sell for hundreds of dollars. In the low cost range, individual expression upon a t-shirt has gone well beyond graphic printing. Folks have come up with myriad ways to transform the tee – from creative casual wears to designer-inspired fashions.
All this work on a ten dollar t-shirt? Yet, it is precisely the labor and love put into something that gives it quality, personality, and values. I am reminded of a passage in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. It was what the little prince said to a rose in a garden of thousands of roses: “An ordinary passer-by would think my rose looked just like you. But in herself she matters more than all of you together, since it is she that I watered.” So it is the time you have wasted on your rose that makes your rose so important.
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