I just finished reading a book called "A Concise History Of Costume And Fashion" by James Laver, out of a whim to learn a bit about a subject I have very little familiarity with and no immediate use for, and my obvious affections for histories of artforms. Now, even to a layperson like myself, there are some truly glaring holes in this book that you could drive a truck through. Its conception of history is the unfortunately-standard kind that just keeps moving north and to the west over time, the kind that mentions Ancient Egypt and then never again breathes a word of Africa. But even by these standards, it is breathtakingly myopic to the point that it doesn't even qualify as eurocentric: "fashion", to this book, is a negotiation that takes place exclusively between France and England, and nowhere else. The Germans merit one mention I can recall for a 16th-century craze for slashed fabrics, America is uttered of about once a century from the 18th to the 20th, and I can't recall any word of ITALY whatsoever after Ancient Rome! In a book on FASHION!
One of the biggest holes, but its most forgivable, is that the book was written in 1969 and so simply stops there. It is to my understanding that there were later editions that expanded and revised the book forwards further to additional then-presents, but honestly, the ending that this first edition has is one of its most interesting parts. It is a time capsule. Late-60s Age-Of-Aquarius utopian optimism passively suffuses its every opinionated pronouncement on the present and future. Despite the author being the kind of person to catalog developments in the Victorian bustle and uncritically deploy words like "Oriental" and "savage," he's extremely gung-ho that the gains of women's lib are, this time and unlike any time before, not going to be rolled back towards passivity — in essence, there would be no revival of corsets and cumbersome skirt designs. And of course, he called that shot right.
As for the men, he observes that for over 150 years the popularity of the ever-sober barely-changing suit came from an aspiration to genteel status that simply no longer appeals to people. Already in '69 it was easily observed that suit-wearing was now generally only done when obligatory, like if you were a banker or going to a wedding, and again this has gotten only more true as the suit has continued to be basically the same for now over 200 years. (Hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it!) Amusingly, though, his final and more specific called shot for the future is that, without the function to signal class hierarchy as a primary motivation, everyone will just keep dressing sexier and sexier from now on and there's an implication we might even but probably won't get used to tits-out looks. Not quite, my man.
What wasn't quite observed by Laver was the full implications of this democratically-minded abandonment of aristocratic aspiration: these days, not even the aristocrats want to dress fancy anymore, and it is desirable to look "working class." Inverting the entire history of fashion as an industry, the rich no longer lead but follow. Denim jeans are now the standard trouser for all occasions, our captains of industry are frankly embarrassed to be caught in any shirt with a collar, our president wears Sketchers sneakers, and Josh Fetterman is fighting sumptuary laws for everyman cargo shorts in the halls of power. Casualization has long been a cyclical factor in fashion, but for a very long time now we've been caught in a kind of anti-elitist deflationary spiral with no plausible reason for a pivot towards formalization in sight.
Your average dude on the street does not dress to look attractive, but rather is (in my experience) quite proudly apathetic about how he dresses. He says he cares not about superficial form but practical function, and may often integrate this ideology into his gender identity. Of course, our stereotypical Apathetic Man can not be considered the actual driving force of fashion trends, due to his obvious passivity. Rather, belying his nominal formal apathy, he buys what garments are acceptably universally-adopted and masculine-coded (so, no crop tops.) And it almost goes without saying, but he also can only buy what is actually made available for purchase, eg what is decided to be produced and sold in large quantities. You ever look at the "male" clothes from a Wal-Mart in the past 10, 20 years? At times, I've noticed their entire selection of available shirts to be graphic tees, without even a plain t-shirt around. It's nigh-ubiquitous.
The graphic tee is the definitive garment of the last 50 years, bar none. It IS our culture. It is perhaps the most "postmodern" garment it is possible to conceive of, by Learning From Las Vegas' definition. I hate Las Vegas, and I hate the graphic tee. It is the bluntest instrument of signification yet devised in fashion, because it is literally just a sign printed on a flat canvas, basically equivalent to walking around with a sandwich board. I read that Andy Warhol himself was indirectly responsible for the graphic tee, just by way of improving his screen-printing technology for his paintings. That might not be actually true, but it's spiritually true to me.
They're seemingly an avenue of individual self-expression, but in reality people usually express their conformity to a mass-produced sentiment, too often quasi-jokes that make the world a meaner or duller place. Many graphic tees are flat-out advertisements that people perversely PAY to pollute the visible light spectrum with. And yet, a literal reading of the signs people actively brand themselves with remains curiously elusive. There's always a good possibility that an apathetic person might elect to broadcast a statement on their torso all day long everywhere they go without considering it any kind of personal statement, rendering it meaningless non-communication. Or the relation the wearer has in mind might be something more elliptical and associative than literal: the classic case of someone wearing a band t-shirt with no love for or even knowledge of the band, but instead expressing an appreciation for the aesthetics, and/or signalling a nebulous social association. (Consider the gulf between the Led Zeppelin shirt and the Joy Division shirt.) It's as maddening as it is strangely beautiful to step back and appreciate the semantic demolition derby.
But there's also another, I believe more recent paradigm for the graphic tee: on-demand printing of arbitrary material on the shirt, rather than top-down mass production. This means unique expression in ones' clothing is now easier than it has ever been before, requiring no equipment, skill, or even material, only some money. Less-popular media and brands can by this means horn in on the ad-shirt action, too, and they get to retain the effect of personal endorsement by only selling directly to their niche, rather than a supermarket consumer. However, print on demand means the cost of offering a t-shirt design for sale is effectively nothing more than the design cost, and you run no risk of spending on producing t-shirts that don't get purchased. These are perfect conditions for profitable spam. So we have been collectively deluged with cynical, automated t-shirts scraping the internet for their bonemeal, be it pictures that can be slapped on the canvas or our personal data to be reconstituted into Mad Libs like "It's a [month] [gender]s who like [band name] and own a [vehicle name] thing, you wouldn't get it!" in a robotic, inept, grotesque parody of personal expression. This, too, is emblematic of our era.
I also don't like the way graphic tees feel on my skin. I find them actively less comfortable than tight clothes. That's really the main thing I dislike about them and everything else is post hoc.
