The Breakout of the Undershirt

Undershirts received an almost fatal blow in 1934, when Clark Gable stripped off his shirt in It Happened One Night to reveal only a bare chest underneath. Suddenly this summer, the undershirt is very much back in--but not as an undergarment. Violently colored and decorated with cartoon characters (Mickey Mouse), symbols of dissent (a marijuana plant) or simple slogans (Fly the Friendly Skies of Cambodia), the shirts are a bright new trend for the kids--and the Over-30s too. Much more than other clothing, they are designed to convey the wearer's feelings. Hearts on sleeves are no longer necessary; now the message is right out front.

Ideological Warriors. The variety is enormous, from tank top through the classic skivvy T shirt to the long-sleeved variety favored by snowbound North Dakota farmers. Some models sport one red sleeve and one blue, joined by a rainbowed trunk. Some stop fetchingly just above the navel, others stretch down to the ankle. Almost all flaunt a symbol, and the range is all-encompassing. The ideological warriors can sport the peace sign, the clenched fist marking Women's Liberation or even the Viet Cong flag. Exhibitionists will love the startling model imprinted with a properly located life-size photo of a pair of breasts. Optimists can don a shirt featuring a rainbow with a slice of pie--pie in the sky, of course. A satin applique style shows a country cabin with smoke curling toward the sky, signifying that the wearer wants to get away from it all.

The most popular--if least socially significant--of all the shirts are those featuring Batman or Superman emblems, or one of a host of cartoon characters that include Porky Pig, the Road Runner, Daffy Duck (who is smoking a joint), Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. There is even a superman undershirt dress, which the wearer can presumably don in the nearest available phone booth.

New at Newport. The fad seems to have blossomed on the West Coast, in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and has reached its full glory along Berkeley's Telegraph Avenue, the Fifth Avenue of the counterculture. There the variety is dazzling, further enhanced by the almost universal adoption of the braless look. Manhattan's lively East Village is another showcase for the undershirt underground, but the shirts are no longer the exclusive property of the kids. In the swank summer resorts of East Hampton, Southampton and Stonington, Captain America shirts are showing up. At the America's Cup races in Newport, Mrs. David Rockefeller Jr. wore a gold Superman tank top; Brooke Hayward, Jill St. John and Raquel Welch (with an explosive "POW" on her version) are into the undershirt scene too.

So far, no one has fully explained the remarkable revitalization of the undershirt. For some wearers, it is an anti-Establishment gesture; for others simply a put-on, in both senses of the word. Manufacturers are discovering profits as cheery as the shirts themselves. New York's Elaine Post, whose firm began to turn out pop undershirts in February, reports that grosses jumped from $26,000 in March to a healthy $150,000 in July. She expects total 1970 sales of more than $5,000,000, not bad for items that retail for $6 to $12--and in some versions are much less than that. The fad obviously has a way to go. No one has yet produced a model emblazoned with a teabag--obviously the most appropriate T shirt of them all.

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