I'M WITH STUPID: SHIRTS GO FOR MORSO TORSO

I'M WITH STUPID: SHIRTS GO FOR MORSO TORSO

FEATURES

J.Kordosh

by

The unending angst of American fashion is-on occasion—overlooked, overwhelmed, or otherwise bulldozed by common sense. A classic example is blue jeans, pre-B.S. (Brooke Shields.) Blue jeans are functional and durable and they even used to be cheap...and you practically have to go to church if you want much more than that.

Nowadays, of course, blue jeans have one the way of the Bee Gees and men s rcial hair—annoying pud, to be sure, but lear and spiritless harbingers of a homoenized nation. It might be tough to stop -earing ’em, but it might be worth a 'ought, too.

I -shirts are logical successors to till the vacant jean pool. In fact, they're so functional, durable, and cheap that the only thing that could replace ’em would be 25d Teflon shoelaces. Just to put a head on this fashionable brew, t-shirts are now me-shirts, and you can proudly display anything from Phil Donahue to the entire New Testament on your chest. And actually go out in public!

‘Twas not always so: in sadder days, t-shirts were underwear. In even more backwards times there were no t-shirts at all! (Here we’re reaching back into the P.M.—Pre-Mall—era, if you wanna let your imagination jump on a southbound train.) Like most history, this is one bejezus incredible turn of events, but there isn’t shit we can do about it. We can only stand back, ever watchful, learning from our mistakes. Also, get out your copy of The World According To Garb and turn to page 27.

OPEN THE DOOR, ELI: In 1793, Eli Whitney produced his first cotton gin, an invention that ranks somewhere around soap and Happy Hour in the hierarchy of human needs. Within a decade, the United States multiplied its cotton exports by a factor of eight trillion and—finally—staged a Civil War in memory of Mr. W. What this all boiled down to was that you could make lotsa clothes out of lotsa cotton. Or, as they sang at Appomattox: “Eli, Eli, Oh!” MOVING PICTURES: By the 1930’s, men were wearing what we call tank tops as routine underwear. The undershirt scandal of the decade occurred in 1934, when Clark Gable didn’t wear one opposite Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night. “Why not me, too?” asked American men, and undershirt sales dropped faster than you could silk-screen “Save the whales.” People took things mighty serious back then.

SETTING TRENDS ON THE BOUNDING MAIN: The t-shirt proper—that is, the rag with sleeves—bowed in during WW II, courtesy of the United States Navy. While the Army and Marines were stopping Tojo and Hitler on sheer guts and tank-tops, our boys on the sea were sporting the latest in government issue. A new wave, no doubt about it. After the war, fashionable consumers picked up on t-shirts at surplus stores until Fruit Of The Loom sued for peace, coming to terms with McHale and setting up Fooj in New York’s garment district.

MUMBLE, MUMBLE, COOL: Came the 50’s and Marlon Brando, the man who did more for the t-shirt than Bonnie Franklin did for well-meaning comedy. Through A Streetcar Named Desire (if they redo it, he could be the streetcar), On The Waterfront, and The Wild Ones, Brando equated t-shirts with real-man confusion.

Even better, he wore ripped-up wowwear, which is just about as confusing a thing a real man can wear. The fit was tight and the world war right—but the shirt was still white. Give M.B. a lotta credit before we blithely skip into the present-day, where it’s every shade for itself.

COTTON COMES TO SMALLVILLE: Nowadays, everybody wears t-shirts, from Baby Yowser (“Almost Crawling”) to Peroxide Mama (“Don’t Stare —Grow Your Own.”) The t-shirt biz sprawls with mindless splendor, churning out human bumper-stickers like so many Star Wars toys. Everyone has something to say, and since they can’t say it, t-shirts double as indelible shrinks for the entire nation. What used to be pretty darned exciting underwear has become perfectly acceptable every-wear. The Big Catch is that you practically can’t buy a t-shirt without something on it. I’m not talking about lint, I’m talking about you (and me) looking like sublime wits (coke dealers wearing Coke t-shirts) or a bunch of damned fools (ditto).

Looking in on our local t-shirt shoppe, it’s fairly obvious how chest fever breaks down, 80’s-wise. First off is the ever-nifty rock shirt, an item that not only tells the world you adore J.Geils (Stones, Police, Iron Maiden, Big Bill Broonzy—take your pick), but that you’ll fork up a ten-spot for the privilege of broadcasting it. The locals tell me that rock shirts bring in as much as half the business and that the league-leaders are Ozzy Osbourne, Rush, AC/DC, Zep, the Stones, and the Doors. As you can see, we’re pretty much hobnobbing with Nietzsche here. Generally, the quality of rock shirts is spectacular, though— screaming logos and just-a-pulse-away Morrisons in true-to-what-you-might-confuse-with-life colors. If you want to get picky, the real thing is usually only available at concerts, where you get the “World Tour 1989” emblazoned on your purchase. Most vendors can peddle these collectables on this side of the law, but generally not until the tour is over.

Kids (e.g“I am the Hulk! I am mean!”) account for a nextbig chunk of green. Fad-items are hot with the little monkeys, but when you’re four years old it’s probably hard to tell a fad from an eternal truth. Coolwear for the small includes the Dukes of Hazzard (by a mile), Smerfs, and whatever grandma thinks is just the cutest thing (like, “Grandmas Are Ace.”) Don’t blink, though, there’ll probably be another Darth Vader flick out by the time you read this. For the modicum-aged, Pac-Man is a pretty desirable shirt dude.

Next up—and certainly the most intriguing aspect of t-shirtanomia—is the socalled (by me) “Blatant Message Shirt.” These are usually emblazoned with rhetoric that makes any script from My Three Sons read like Melville—going from the dumb (“Women Like The Simple Things In Life: Men”) to the inane (“I Married A Nun.. .Nun In The Morning And Nun At Night”) to the positively ridiculous (“Sex Is Like Snow —You Never Know How Many Inches You’ll Get Or How Long It Will Last.”) The B.M.’s (blatant messages) are almost inevitably sex-oriented, if you wanna call what a 12-year-old perceives as sex of any kind of orientation at all. Hey, grown-up people are wearing these things: “I’m Foxy”...“Sex Is OK In Its Place —Yours Or Mine?”...and the WhatDoes-It Mean?, “Thirty & Dirty.” Listen, if you’re picking up broads wearing this kabibble, drop me a line, OK??

Far healthier are the product-endorsement shirts, which proclaim your aesthetic with all the force of Philadelphia cream cheese. “Adidas” seems to be a veritable evergreen, along with universal faves like “Budweiser,” “Harley-Davidson,” and “J Love NY.” Because these are undoubtly the most common (in more ways than one) t-shirts, it’s practically impossible to let ’em annoy you. What the hell, these shirts are genuine American artifacts, with the possible exception of “Eat at Sambo’s,” “(Fill In The Locale) Is For Lovers,” and “CREEM. ”

The absolute hardest shirts to get mad at, though, are the lovey-doveys. “Property Of Richard Riegel, ” for example is about the dearest thing Mrs. Riegel can wear (not to imply that she does). Better yet are the matched “I’m Hers /I’m His” ads that you just know wasn’t the guy’s idea, but one he’s man enough to go along with. Of course, the absolute top-of-the-line in this category is the classic “Baby” with an arrow pointing to Piacentaville,. the shirt that s set a nation Wondering. What, does somebody think the poor woman’s hidinq a bowling ball in there??

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