A lively history of summer's favorite T-shirt.

Folks in the good old U.S. of A. bought 1.8 billion T-shirts in the year that ended in April of '91, according to Impressions trade magazine. That many T-shirts would fill a drawer that would reach to the...well, never mind.

The simple T-shirt towers as one of the most popular items of clothing in our history. It wasn't always thus.

Before Brando.
Contrary to popular opinion, actor Marlon Brando didn't invent the T-shirt. (More about him in a bit.) Near as we could track the T's origins, the shirt got its start aboard ships on the high seas and in the British Royal Navy. (Used to be you could count on the Soviets to invent these things.)

U.S. Navy sailors were issued T-shirts as upper-body underwear in 1913, we're told by Walter Bradford, curator of the Army Center of Military History.

Until 1934, most American male civilians wore tank-type undershirts, similar to the silhouette of Michael Jordan's jersey. In '34, Clark Gable took off his dress shirt in "It Happened One Night" and — holy macho! — no undershirt. U.S. undershirt sales plunged 75% in the year that followed.

Gobs, swabbies and gyrenes.
In its 1938 catalog, Sears Roebuck was offering a gob shirt, similar to today's T, "gob" being a slang term for sailor.

With U.S. entry in World War II, millions of American men found themselves no longer having to decide whether it was manly to wear undershirts. Uncle Sam said it was — and that was definitely that!

As military curator Bradford tells it, the "swabbies" in our Navy were issued "undershirts, quarter-sleeve," GI-speak for T-shirt. Army soldiers were issued tank shirts, as were marines.

Bradford says both foot soldiers and gyrenes got to fancying the Navy T's in the South Pacific. "The soldiers and marines began procuring the sailors' T-shirts by any means they could — borrowing, swiping, whatever," Bradford says. "World War II had a lot to do with breaking down the formality of dress in America." When the GIs mustered out at war's end, a good many T-shirts went home with them.

James Dean to Don Johnson.
No T-shirt history, however brief, would be complete without mention that Brando wore a sweat-soaked T with great success in "A Streetcar Named Desire" on Broadway in 1947. Then came the Korean War and a new generation of men donned T-shirts.

And in 1955, James Dean popularized the T still more, wearing the shirt in "Rebel Without a Cause." We'll spare you the long list of other celebs sporting T-shirts, save to mention that it continues right up to the present.

Beatniks and Flower Children.
Back in the '50s, the Lost Generation of beats alternated between black T's and black turtlenecks. The '60s brought another war and strife on the streets at home. Always versatile, the T-shirt entered the fray on all fronts. Worn by GIs, protesters, students of every stripe.

Posters were soon elbowed aside by the printed T-shirt, a trend that continues to this day. Shirts with messages became ubiquitous. Self-proclaimed "T-shirt Kings" could be found coast-to-coast. In 1972, one of the Kings pronounced printed T's "just a fad that'll soon fade." (It's 20 years and counting.)

Tie-dyed, Mood T's and more.
Along came the flood. Tie-dyed T's. Mood T's that changed color in response to the wearer's body temperature. Even Radical Chic embraced the T. And the T had become the souvenir of choice.

Of the message T-shirts, one hipstress finally cracked: "Nobody wants to hear from your T-shirt!"

Bootleg T-shirts began to appear. At a '78 Rolling Stones concert in Chicago's Soldier Field, 75,000 attended. Only six souls were arrested on drug charges, while 63 were seized for illegal T-shirt sales on Park District property.

Inevitably, even dogs got into the act, wearing T-shirts saying: Christian Diog, Pierre Cardog, Male Chauvinist Puppy.

Cool, cooler and coolest.
In 1980, the Army, in one of the exhaustive studies for which it is so known, addressed this burning question: Is a person in summer cooler with or without a T-shirt on?

"It depends," concluded the Army study. But it elaborated further and in a way that should bring joy to Lands' End customers one and all. If the T-shirt is 100% cotton, said the Army report, it's definitely cooler to wear your T-shirt on sweltering days, because cotton absorbs perspiration, which then evaporates in the well-known cooling process.

Now just where does Lands' End fit into the long and colorful history of America's love affair with T-shirts? Born too late to invent it, we did the next best thing, by improving the elegantly simple T-shirt.

If ever a piece of clothing ranked as a durable classic, it's the T-shirt in all its versatili-T!