100 years of timeless tees

As hard as it is to imagine a time without T-shirts, people once had to live within the confines of long sleeves, buttons, and blouses. For the last 100 years, the T-shirt has been making our lives more comfortable, more artful, and all around cooler.

1913

T-shirts were worn as undergarments among the United States Navy and European soldiers in World War One

1932

Jockey developed the first athletic T-shirt for the University of Southern California Trojans football team to reduce chafing from shoulder pads

1939

The first promotional T-shirt was made. The shirt was create for the now-classic film, The Wizard of Oz

1950s

The plain white tee becomes a status symbol thanks to James Dean in “Rebel Without a Cause” and Marlon Brando in “A Streetcar Named Desire”

1969

Adman Don Price produced hundreds of tie-dyed tees for Woodstock performers making the pattern a part of the new counterculture uniform

1977

With the reputation of a tourists nightmare, the City of New York hired designer Milton Glaser who sketched the city’s now-iconic logo design on a napkin

2006

IU graduate Aaron Waltke broke the then Guiness World Record for most T-shirts worn at one time with 160 shirts, but the current record is 257