For most of the '50s the T-shirt was confined to children, but there were two notable exceptions--the beats and the bikers.
Worn by then-Sen. John F. Kennedy in Washington, the T-shirt was popularized 20 years later by "working woman" Jacqueline Onassis on the streets of New York.
Every closet or drawer has one: a white T-shirt. It may be plain or decorated with a favorite slogan or team logo. It may be cotton, polyester or silk. But it's there.
And if you've ever wondered how the T-shirt wormed its way into our national wardrobes--or just how actress Julia Roberts looks in a wet one--the answers are in "The White T" (HarperStyle, Umbra Editions, $45), an homage to the ubiquitous under- and outer- garment in pictures by photographers such as Annie Leibovitz, Herb Ritts and Steven Meisel. Author Alice Harris spent four years gathering the compelling pictures and engrossing history of the T-shirt.
Americans may think of the T-shirt as distinctly their own, but early styles were actually seen in Great Britain at the start of the 20th Century when, as the story goes, Queen Victoria ordered the soldiers to sew arms on their undergarments so she wouldn't have to see the underarm hair revealed when they saluted her.
The U.S. Navy was first to adopt a crewneck, short-sleeved white cotton T-shirt as part of the standard issue uniform in 1913. By the start of World War II the rest of the services had followed suit. After an Air Force gunner appeared in his on the cover of Life magazine in 1942 and a spate of starring roles in movies, the T-shirt became synonymous with manliness. Good manliness.
That is until 1951, when James Dean wore a white T-shirt under his motorcycle jacket in the movie "Rebel Without a Cause." From then on bad boy's wore white Ts.
Harris, a New Yorker who has worked in the fashion industry for several years as a writer, serves on the President's Council of the Gay Men's Health Crisis. The book is a fundraiser and proceeds from the project will be donated to the group's AIDS services division. In November, Harris talked about how the book came to be.
