T Shirts with a Messagebookmark this at :: del.icio.us :: Digg it

Since the late 1980s and especially the 1990s, T-shirts with prominent designer-name logos have been popular, especially with teenagers and young adults. These garments allowed consumers to flaunt their taste in designer brands in an inexpensive way, in addition to being decorative. Examples of designer T-shirt branding include Calvin Klein, FUBU, Ralph Lauren, and The Gap.

Screen printed T-shirts have been a standard form of product advertising for major consumer products, such as Coca-cola and Mickey Mouse, since the 1970s. However, since the 1990s, it has become common practice for companies of all sizes to produce T-shirts with their corporate logos or messages as part of their overall advertising campaigns.
The early 2000s saw the renewed popularity of T-shirts with slogans and designs with a strong inclination to the humorous and/or ironic. The trend has only increased later in this decade; embraced by celebrities, such as Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, and reflected back on them, too ('Team Aniston').

T-shirts with bold slogans were popular in the UK in the 1980sThe story of the message tee embraces the modern phenomenon of “personal branding” (indicating, in this case, the wearer’s sense of humor), as well as a climate in which statements—political or personal—are generally preferred to be catchy than true. Notable was the popularity of political slogans and messages on T-shirts coinciding with the presidential election.

The political and social statements that T-shirts often display have become, since the 2000s, one of the reasons that they have so deeply permeated different levels of culture and society. The statements also may be found to be offensive, shocking or pornographic to some. Many different organizations have caught on to the statement-making trend, including chain and independent stores, websites, and schools.