My Third Eye Can See Straight Throught Your Shirt

T-shirts were spun from modest beginnings as 19th-century underwear, but today they’re a pervasive semiotic mode. Their messages speak to sex, politics, culture and class. Their wearability (and disposability) transcends gender, age and race. They may even be the world’s most ubiquitous form of visual art. So how did the go-to undergarment of farmer and soldier become a tool of countercultural protest, and an icon of Western consumerism?It all started back in the Wild West. Picture an old-timey, American frontier onesie – the kind with the butt flap, like Marty McFly wears in Back to the Future Part III (1990). One day, in the mid-1800s, a miner or dockworker (details are sketchy) cut one such union suit through the torso and threw away the legs. In doing so, a crude precursor to the T-shirt was invented.By 1913, the US Navy was issuing personnel with crew-necked, short-sleeved versions of such underclothes. These comfortable, washable, cheap pieces – nowadays known as the ‘plain white tee’ – quickly gained favour with labourers across America, particularly during the Great Depression.In the 1940s, World War II servicemen began repurposing their cotton undershirts as casual outerwear. A GI even made the cover of Life magazine in July 1942, repping his Air Corps Las Vegas Gunnery School T-shirt. This is one of the earliest printed tees seen in popular culture, predated only by those featured in The Wizard of Oz (1939). While the popularity of graphic tees would surge in the 1950s – in line with the Big Bang of teen culture – their sway over social structures dates back to circa 800 B.C.

My Third Eye Can See Straight Throught Your Shirt

The colour Orange was chosen as a result of the experiences of residential school survivor, Phyllis Webstad. Phyllis was only 6 years old when she was sent to St Joseph’s Mission residential school in British Columbia from 1973-1974. Her grandmother had taken her to the store and bought her a brand new shiny orange shirt to wear to school. Phyllis was so excited to wear it to school. However, when Phyllis arrived, she was stripped of her clothing and never saw her orange shirt again. She was neglected, abused, and made to feel like she didn’t matter. She wasn’t allowed to go home for 300 sleeps. She recalls that every child there was crying to go home, but nobody at the school truly cared for them. They were made to feel alone, worthless, and like nobody would save them. Phyllis says that the colour Orange now reminds her of that time in her life where her feelings didn’t matter. Phyllis’ story is a difficult one to hear, and unfortunately it is like many others that attended residential schools.Fortunately, Phyllis was able to return home to her grandmother after that year. As the Executive Director of the Orange Shirt Society, she now uses her story and platform to raise awareness about Orange Shirt Day, and turn the feeling of no one cares into healing and remembrance that every child matters.