Today, no real fashionista can imagine their wardrobe without one, two, or too many slogan t-shirts. This very casual piece of clothing has been allowing people to subtly send messages since as far back as the 1960s, so it’s not a modern invention of hipster-powered wear.
According to Harper’s Bazaar, the trend of slogan t-shirts began in the 1960s when a shop called Mr Freedom on King's Road in Chelsea sold Disney-inspired slogan tees. British fashion designer Vivienne Westwood took this trend a step further the next decade with politically motivated t-shirts.
However, only in the 1980s did the slogan tee really come into the spotlight with English designer Katharine Hamnett's infamous politically charged t-shirts.
"That T-shirt gave me a voice," Hamnett recounted of the iconic moment she shook hands with then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher while wearing a t-shirt that read '58% don't want Pershing', an anti-nuclear statement. Hamnett's t-shirts became instant hit among the crowds and they were copied everywhere.
Today, slogan t-shirts are still a must-have staple. Many fashion brands, including luxury fashion houses like Dior and Saint Laurent, are creating their own versions of the t-shirt.
Meanwhile, poorly translated shirts subvert the idea of carrying a message on a shirt by deliberately not making a lot of sense. Poorly Translated Shirts is part of the Good Shirts project, which began as an Instagram account documenting the strange and fascinating shirts its creator found in Hanoi, Vietnam.
“While living in Hanoi, I became obsessed with these strange shirts that bore corrupted versions of famous company logos, misjointed platitudes or complete nonsense text vomited all over a T-shirt,” the creator explains on the Good Shirts website.
According to the description, they sought them out at every marketplace like a thrifter searching for a hidden gem, though the gems they desired were not typically beautiful, but strange and rife with mistakes.
“Still, there was an accidental beauty to the shirts I found, something profound and hilarious-without-trying. Over time, as the Instagram page grew and as submissions poured in from all across the world, the theme of the account began to change to a more all-encompassing fun T-shirt enthusiasm. Today, I post shirts that, accidentally or on-purpose, make me laugh.”
The Twitter page of Poorly Translated Shirts is home to 187.9k followers who come in for a daily fix, and it seems like the account’s audience is still growing. It’s easy to see people’s fascination with absurdity in such a mundane form like a t-shirt. Both rich in history and totally without, these poorly translated shirts speak to the audience who don’t expect much except hilarity itself.
