T-Shirts in the 1930s - 1940s

[Papperskatt]

"Coolest thing ever" Haha

Haha, it took me a while to realise that they didn't mean cool as we use it today...

 

[Dinerman]

1913


1939

 

[vintage.vendeuse]

I love that 30s ad, what a handsome casual look for a man: a neat pocket T and pinstriped linen pants on a summer day.

(And thanks for the vocab lesson: balbriggan.)

 

[Dinerman]

 

[Stanley Doble]

You'll see quite a few young men wearing shirts like that in the various New York Worlds Fair home movies that are floating around -- they were quite popular casual wear in the summer of 1939-40. But they weren't *undershirts,* they were sold and worn as sportswear.

Printed novelty T-shirts for kids with pictures of popular licensed characters were being sold in the Sears catalog as early as 1948, but they go back even further than that. Somewhere around here I have a 1941-dated snapshot of my uncle wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with an iron-on picture of Captain Marvel. But I don't think too many grown men would have gone around in such a shirt.

Buddy Ebsen wears a Mickey Mouse jersey in Broadway Melodies of 1936 in his role as a comic dancer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxjEqgNIFqI

Sing Before Breakfast

I thought it was a T shirt but it's not. I can't think of an actor wearing a T shirt in a movie before WW2 except possibly an athlete.

 

[Dinerman]

To answer one of FedoraFan1990's original questions, when did t-shirts go from being underwear to outerwear: The more I look, the more I find that they have always been outerwear. They descended from cotton sportswear shirts, which, as seen above, date back to the turn of the century with very little change. The started being worn as undershirts in the mid 1930s, around the time boxers and briefs started overtaking union suits in terms of popularity. But even the manufacturers of the "undershirt" versions advertised them as being able to be worn as summertime and sports wear, in addition to undershirts.

Here are some more ads

1939


1942


1948


1949


1950


1951


1956 (v necks and sleeveless)

 

[Quetzal]

Dinerman's magazine posts are right on the money; they've been used for sportswear by men since before WWII, maybe even since the 1920s. But they were not like the T-shirts of today, as they were made with thicker, usually knitted, fabrics in a form-fitting cut, almost like a sweater of the period. As casual wear, they were only worn by boys until after WWII when they began to evolve into the more recognizable "T" of today.

-Quetzal

 

[tropicalbob]

My dad, a WWII marine and I'd say fairly typical of his generation in matters of dress, wouldn't have been caught dead in public in a t-shirt. Only on Saturday mornings doing work around the house.

 

[Cocker]

One of the earliest graphic t-shirt I've ever seen:





Always found this design pretty cool, and decided to order a replica one last week.

 

[Mangrove]

One of the earliest graphic t-shirt I've ever seen:

Here's a colour film shot in 1941 in Ohio showing many graphic T-shirts.

 

[BlueTrain]

Graphic T-shirts were not exclusively American. Canadian soldiers captured at the Dieppe raid were seen wearing undershirts (t-shirts) with unit emblems. Of course, Canadians are Americans, too, sort of. But my father never wore t-shirts as an outer garment and only relatively late in his life as an undergarment. At one time, a shirt was considered an undergarment. My father also always wore a hat when dressed up, which was only on Sunday. In fact, although he was a truck driver, he used to wear a suit all day long on Sunday. But that was the extent of his dressing up. He never wore anything formal, a suit being "informal." Informal not being the same as casual.

At one time, almost before living memory, there was a formal daytime dress, which sometimes showed up in movies. Groucho Marx usually wore a coat with tails in his old movies, with vest and necktie and, I think, a wing collar. Formal evening dress is white tie. A tuxedo is somewhere in-between but generally worn only in the evening but in the morning, too, if you stay up that late.

 

[BlueTrain]

I wanted to mention also that I recall seeing in an old movie, probably from around 1950, give or take a few years, a man wearing a t-shirt as an outer garment and very obviously also wearing underneath a sleeveless "tank top" style undershirt, same as my father always wore. I sometimes do the same thing during cold weather, with a regular long-sleeved shirt over everything--tucked in, of course.

I can't really recall anyone wearing an ordinary plain white t-shirt as an outer garment but there were other very similar knit garments that were relatively common, at least among kids and younger men. They either had contrasting trip or some kind of collar, like a Henley collar, I think it was, which is something not seen so much now. It even seems like they were more common than polo shirts but my memory is probably faulty. T-shirts intended to be worn as an outer garment, especially for work, generally had a chest pocket and was generally heavier than t-shirts sold as underwear. That's still true, too. The men here at work in our cabinet-making shop all wear t-shirts like that, mostly with the company logo. Some of the sales people wear polo shirts with the company logo. I don't have a polo shirt but I do have a blue button-down long sleeve shirt with the company logo that I wear on appropriate occasions, which are rare. I also have a baseball cap with the company logo, too.