Suits To A T

The Age

Saturday August 26, 2006

JANICE BREEN BURNS

They were the bumper stickers of youth once, writes Janice Breen Burns, but what are they now?

In 1986 a chap could divulge his penchant for Satan, or Santa for that matter, without uttering a word. He could swagger about like a scary disciple of Megadeth or Metallica or Slayer, all apocalyptic, red-eyed, blood-oozing skulls. Or he could declare his love of puppies and kittens with a picture of those on his chest too. That was the smashing thing about a couple of metres of pure cotton interlock, cut and stitched into a T-shaped top: the love, the politics, the rebellion, the psycho-social tendencies they could so helpfully convey ("Well, I never picked YOU for a Megadeth Slut, Kylie!"). T-shirts were virtual personal billboards, bumper stickers for any youth generation on a frenetic quest for identity (what youth generation isn't?). One design carefully picked from a rack of 20 could dredge your deepest depths, reveal more than could ever be plumbed from a decade of psychotherapy sessions. Just pop it on - this rich, hand-picked canvas of the soul - and all your dreams and secret yearnings, not to mention, the stuff that makes you really, really cross sometimes, could be splashed into a public arena. Yes, I've got pimples and braces! Yes I shop with my mum! But my inner self is a voracious baby-eating slave of satan! Grrrr! 'Tis so!

See? Identity crisis solved, and not a word uttered.

It's not the same now. There are just too many T-shirts. What's left to say, when it's all been said? Still BEING said? The politics are so slick now, the band graphics so clever. The brand names and slogans have tainted the mix. (I'm a Nike type! I'm a Puma person! What's that all about?) The search-word "T-shirt" Googles 10,600,000 pages from the internet, for heaven's sake. Visit T-shirts.com and the problem is immediately clear. For $US20 plus postage and handling you can select your identity crisis solution from any one of a dozen categories, including "Funny", "Youth/girly", "Lifestyle", "Holidays".

T-shirt culture appears to have gone the way of all fashion. It got sophisticated, went global, and even the truly inspired get lost in the morass. Mass-produced identity crisis solutions. We don't even look any more. Every girl and her poodle has her own T-shirt label now. Where's the love, the anger, the politics, the outlet for closet Megadeth sluts in that? Lost in the confusion. Every young bloke and his mates individualise theirs at the local Design-your-own bar. Which is all very well but, all this individuality is giving me a headache. Little wonder, one of the most robust fads to mushroom among T-shirts since the late 1990s, and which is still on a high plateau now, is vintage Ts. The search for authenticity, originality and anything a cut above the flock, is prized like an enemy's warm beating heart. Increasingly, old band shirts are pursued as hotly as collectible couture. Anything for individuality among all the individuality.

It is customary for most of us to rotate at least 10 T-shirts in our wardrobe at any time, and then to discard them like an old hairdo. This is lucky. There would be nowhere for the trillion new personalised, individualised, original Ts per annum to go otherwise.

Photos: From Rock Tease - The Golden Years of Rock T-shirts, by Erica Easley and Ed Chalfa, $29.95, Thames & Hudson.