Category: History

When people imagine Woodstock, they often picture more than just mud, music, and myth. In the collective imagination, the 1969 festival also exists as a merch moment — a milestone in the history of the concert T-shirt. It seems obvious, almost inevitable: an event that iconic must have had T-shirts for sale. There must have been attendees wearing the Woodstock dove. There must have been stacks of them in cardboard boxes behind a makeshift booth. That assumption has muddied the waters regariding which vintage t-shirts with Woodstock logos on them actually came from the event. Like many things about Woodstock, ... Read more

From Bobby-Soxers to Band Tees: The Birth of Wearable Fandom Legend has it that teenage girls in the 1940s known as Bobby-Soxers — named for their ankle-high white socks rolled down above saddle shoes — created the first unofficial band merch. Long before silk screens and licensing deals, these young fans supposedly turned their wardrobes into shrines of devotion. According to popular lore, some even inked the names of their favorite crooners across sweaters, collars, and shirt hems, transforming plain garments into personal billboards for stars like Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and Perry Como. So far, we haven’t uncovered any ... Read more

  View this post on Instagram   A post shared by defunkd (@defunkd) I got this sweatshirt about 10 years ago in a bundle of vintage clothing from a second-hand clothing mill in the Netherlands. I had no clue what it was, but it seemed promising and of the rap tee genre. This was also amid the tri-blend t-shirt goldrush, where it seemed any print on a tri-blend tee would fetch more money. And this just so happened to be a Russell Athletic tri-blend sweatshirt, so I thought, I could really have something unique here. And I wasn’t wrong. This ... Read more

The standard lore is that Crazy Shirts began in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1964; reached its apex in the 70s and 80s; and was on the verge of being gone forever by 2001. But there’s more. A lot more. This is a story with all the craggy and crooked madness of any true Southern California sartorial snapshot, a t-shirt tale told with twists and tumbles.  The main owner, Rick Ralston, had the seeds of the idea when he was a lad in Montebello, grabbing a can of spray paint and throwing a fresh coat and a quirky design over a plain ... Read more

The date was April 30th, 1975. America was fresh off 20 years of conflict in Vietnam. Tensions at home run high as Soldiers return home to anti-war activists. Veterans returning from Vietnam, not with their battalion or company, but alone on a plane after their 365-day tour. Their pain was real but the support from the government, or from the people was not. Fast forward to the late 70s and we can clearly see t-shirt culture take shape as the means of supporting any war cause. Col Mad Mike Hoare and The Wild Geese Mercenaries such as Col Mike Hoare ... Read more