The Garment That Shaped a Century

I’ve lived in white tees for as long as I can remember. Folded in drawers, stacked on shelves, pulled over my head before I’ve even thought about the day. They’ve always felt like background music, always there but never loud.

It’s easy to think of the white tee as nothing more than a plain garment. But the more I’ve sat with it, the more I’ve realised that the white tee carries more than we give it credit for. It has been silence and rebellion, anonymity and identity, cheap commodity and quiet luxury.

And in tracing its story, I’ve come to see my own reasons for starting here, why my first garment had to be a tee, why it had to be white, why it had to feel like something built to last.

This is the story of a century, carried on plain cotton.

 

1913: A functional garment

The story begins in 1913, when the U.S. Navy. Sailors were issued cotton undershirts to wear beneath their uniforms, designed to be practical, durable and easy to wash. A layer against sweat, against the grind of work. They were never designed to be seen.

It is fascinating that from the very start, the white tee was born to disappear. To live unseen, to protect the garments that mattered more. It was silence stitched in white thread.

And interestingly yet, a garment that designed to be hidden, something new was happening. For the first time, millions of men wore a simple, mass-produced garment. It didn’t matter if you were an officer or a deckhand, you wore the same thing. The tee was democratic before it was iconic.

I think about that often. How the pieces we dismiss as “background” are the ones shaping everything else. How what begins as silence can end up becoming the loudest voice.

1950s — Rebellion in Plain Sight

The white tee stayed in the shadows until Hollywood dragged it into the light. Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire. James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. For the first time, the undershirt was worn without apology, without the cover of a uniform.

It was electric. What was once hidden became defiance. Plain cotton became a statement.

And here’s the paradox, the tee was still nothing. It had no print, no decoration, no embroidery. But in its plainness, it became dangerous. It carried sexuality and anger, youth and fragility.

Older generations saw indecency, as if nakedness itself had crept into the public. But younger audiences saw freedom, the possibility of living life without pretense. The same garment, two opposing perspectives.

1960s–70s: Protest in Cotton

By the 1960s, the tee left the cinema and entered the streets. Protestors wore it with slogans of peace, justice, freedom.

This is another moment where the white tee became something else entirely. It stopped being about the individual and became about the collective. One garment multiplied across thousands of people, each carrying a message bigger than themselves.

It was no longer about who wore it, but what it carried. Its plainness invited words, symbols and declarations. It became a stage for ideas. It strikes me that this is when the tee found its voice. And once a garment has carried that weight, it can never go back to being neutral.

2000s — New Perspectives

The 2000s stretched our notion of what the white tee could be. Hip-hop made it oversized, worn in multiples, a canvas of proportion and dignity. Skaters wore it torn, stained and shredded on asphalt. Designers put it back on runways, charging hundreds for something once sold as underwear.

Everywhere you looked, the white tee was there, but never the same. On stage, it was rhythm. In the skate parks, it was grit. In boutique stores, it was luxury.

This is what I love most about it: the white tee adapts without losing itself. It absorbs culture, reflects it, transforms with it. What began as silence now commanded presence. And still, it remained plain. Always living with the tension nothing, but everything. 

Into the Future: The Artist’s Uniform — Why I Began Here

And then there are the artists, painters, musicians, photographers, filmmakers, creative directors. The white tee has always belonged to them. It’s the blank canvas that lets their work shine through. It's neutral, it doesn't compete or distract. It gives the artist space to create.

I’ve always felt that. A white tee lets you be seen without hiding behind the garment. It’s honest, almost brutally so. There’s nowhere to hide when you're wearing a white tee inside it. Your presence has to do the work. That’s why it became the artist’s uniform: a quiet canvas for those who already carry a voice inside them.

When I decided to start my brand, everyone asked why I’d begin with a tee. “Too simple. Too common. Too easy.” But simplicity is where the real difficulty lives. The proportions, the drape, the cut, the weight, everything matters more when nothing else is there to distract you. A tee has to stand on its own. It has to hold presence without saying a word.

Beyond construction, I wanted to begin with a piece that already carried history, memory, identity, a garment with weight before I ever touched it. The 101 Vintage Tee is my answer to that. Made in Japan, cut with discipline, stitched with care, it’s my way of writing myself into a story that began long before me, and will continue long after.