Meryl Streep courtesy of Adonis Chen

There have been a series of articles about the vintage hotties who are currently wowing the world: Sharon Stone and Helen Mirren, Susan Sarandon and Meryl Streep, all of whom have had major cinematic hits at a point in their lives when female movie stars used to become almost invisible. Their clothes have garnered as much attention as their performances – with Sarandon’s red dresses and Streep’s swing coats turning up on catwalk models half their age or less. But one thing few of them have been photographed in … is a T-shirt.

That doesn’t mean women over a certain age shouldn’t wear T-shirts – two of the UK’s finest talents: Judie Dench and Julie Walters, both made red carpet appearances in formal-style T-shirts this year, and Meryl Streep brought the long sleeved jersey T-shirt back into high prominence in The Devil Wears Prada, but it does mean there are new rules to be aware of.

Midriff baring is best left to the under thirties who have abdomens of steel – even the faintest wrinkle or bulge will look glaring if your skin peeks out from under your T-shirt.

The arms matter. In cap or short sleeves, you have to be sure that there isn’t some arm strangle going on – sleeves should be relaxed, not clamped around a body area that does tend to show one’s age at the best of times. For spaghetti straps, make sure you don’t end up with a back fat bulge – it’s not seemly. And while the very young can probably get away with three or four straps on each arm, for vintage ladies it’s probably best to just wear one set of straps and a good supporting, strapless bra.

Oversized T-shirts (Dawn French apart) are not good for public appearances unless you’re on the beach. It just gives the impression that you’ve surrendered to your age, or that you’ve had a senior moment and pulled on your hubby’s T-shirt by mistake. A fitted T-shirt is alluring, especially one that’s specially shaped to the female figure

T-shirts with clever slogans are great, but if you’re over twenty, you need to step back and ask if the message is so important that you want it across your chest. What’s cute in a teen can seem like a brash statement in somebody with age and authority on their side – Katharine Hamnett may have made a career out of T-shirt messages but be very sure that the words you wear really do define the person you wish people to see.

  Karen Davidson, great-granddaughter of Harley-Davidson co-founder William A. Davidson is creative director of general merchandise for Harley-Davidson and supervises design for the company’s two decade old MotorClothes division. Since 1947, when the first Harley leather jackets appeared, the biker ‘uniform’ of black leather jacket, jeans and T-shirt has been a classic, but now things are changing – the traditional ‘leather’ has been joined by leather treated to be water resistant, and even by cottons and synthetic materials.

As bikers have aged, they have also wanted more from their clothing, like shirts that work on the bike and in the office too.  And the customer mix has changed: men purchase about 60% of the clothing and women buy 40%. This has meant creating brighter colours and new styles along the classic lines. Pink leather jackets were introduced a couple years ago and fitted Harley T-shirts are a big seller. Now the line is expanding again to include grommets and appliqués to personalise both T-shirts and jackets. 

Harley-Davidson T-shirt courtesy of jorgemejia

But not just any old T-shirt.  It was the elite troops of the Colombian Army who deceived the terrorist group ‘Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia’ (FARC) into handing over hostages who’d been kept in the jungle for nearly six years. And one of their tools was a Che Guevera T-shirt. 

The left wing terror group had become expert in kidnapping during its war with the Colombian state but Colombian Army members infiltrated the very highest levels of FARC and were able to bring a helicopter to a jungle rendezvous, claiming they were taking the hostages to an international meeting to show FARC’s power.  The most senior member of the infiltration team spent nearly half an hour on the ground with the terrorists, laughing and joking, and clad in a Che Guevara T-shirt, which seems to have helped the FARC soldiers accept that he was ‘one of them’.   

Once back in the air, the amazed hostages, including Ingrid Betancourt, a former candidate for President of Colombia who had been kept in isolation for over five years, were told their ‘captors’ were actually their rescuers.

Che courtesy of slavin fpo

Military and heraldic embroidery might seem a long way away from modern clothing, but although its history is ancient, the art is fully up to date.  One family of embroiderers (called bullion workers because their embroidery took place with golden thread, actually silk woven with genuine gold bullion) came to England in 1767. They were originally Huguenot refugees from Flanders who’d learned their skills in entourage of Catherine de Medicis, when she married into the French court in the 16th century.

In this period heraldic art was used to show the pomp and power of the wearer – garments trimmed with gold lace and embroidery show the rank and achievements of the person they fitted. The family’s name was Hand. The business continued and thrived, moving into embroidery for wedding dresses and stage costumes too. By 2001, M. Hand, merged with the Lock firm of embroiders to form a business that focuses on military, fashion and couture embroidery.

Today you can actually tour the Hand and Lock showrooms and see hand embroidery with genuine gold thread take place in front of you – it’s an astonishing sight. Their embroidery is sent around the world and appears on everything from the dresses worn on stage by Celine Dion to the crests and emblems worn by Princes William and Harry, and other officers, on dress parade. 

Although it might sound far removed from daily life, most of us absorb the impressions of crests and emblems every day, although they probably aren’t hand-embroidered from pure gold! Every school blazer carries a crest, every police department has an emblem along with its shield, every soldier bears his rank, and company along with other insignia and the first thing we do when a meter reader knocks on our door is ask to see his or her ID – which will have a crest or emblem on it!  Embroidery on workwear is usually machine embroidered now, which makes it a lot cheaper than Hand and Lock’s output (here’s a clue, they still price their products in guineas, never a sign of something cheap) but still gives the same impression of officialdom, history and heritage.

Workwear insignia courtesy of connor365

The former Spice Girl, who is now the ‘face’ or rather the ‘body’ of lingerie manufacturer Ultimo, has admitted to a strange addiction: she adores T-shirts from one particular second-hand shop in her new home town – Los Angeles. She says, ‘There’s a place on Fairfax in Los Angeles that sells vintage, classic rock T-shirts. They cost a fortune, and usually have holes in them, but they are very cool.’ So something you threw away a couple of years ago could now be adorning the body of a star!

British-born Mel was given the nickname Scary Spice by the British media because of her outrageous, attitude, ‘abrasive’ Leeds accent and manner of dress on stage – often in leopard-print-skin-tight outfits. She’s also famous for her courtroom paternity battle with Eddie Murphy, who has since admitted fathering her daughter, Angel.

Mel B courtesy of Tawny Kate-aen

Screen printing seems like a quite recent invention to most of us, but a version of it was used in medieval Japan to create images for the backs of silk robes worn at court.

The first application of it in Europe was in the eighteenth century, when it was used to stencil patterns on to fabric for soft furnishings. It wasn’t until the twentieth century that screen printing became a mechanised process, used to create posters, or packaging and fabrics.

There’s a paradox in the history of screen printing that arises at exactly the point when screen printing becomes sexy (the 1960s) and mass market, it also became something that was used to produce limited edition, highly collectable art called Pop Art – creators such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichenstein turned screen printing into a T-shirt, comic book and even art form. There probably wasn’t a home or chest in the country that didn’t have something screen-printed: a logo, a keep on truckin’ slogan, a lampshade or a poster.

Since then it’s become an ever more sophisticated process.  Original limited edition prints can be produced under the direct control of the creator in signed limited numbers, and they might be paintings to hang on a wall or T-shirts to be sold in couture establishments. The immediacy of screen printing, its crisp colours and shapes and ability to work on any material make this the most versatile printing system ever.

hand-printing T-shirts by veganstraightedge

We all know that wedding favours are often monogrammed with the happy couple’s initials, but this most ancient of embroidery arts is being brought right up to date this Christmas in a range of ideas that not only make gifts more personal, but more environmentally friendly too. How?  Well people are much less likely to throw out anything that has their name or initials embroidered into it, they are less likely to lose it and if they do, it’s more likely to be traceable so it can be returned to them – that means less replacement items are bought for lost towels or T-shirts, and that treasured older clothes don’t become ‘old’ they become ‘vintage’ because they have the wearer’s identity bound into their fabric.If you want to give a monogrammed gift, here are the basic rules: 

• A personal monogram is laid out from left to right beginning with the first-name initial, the last-name initial (usually in larger type) and then the middle initial. For the Winnie The Pooh, the monogram would be WTP.
• Things get more complicated when marriage is involved though.  For married couples with the same last name, reading from left to right, the woman’s first-name initial, the last-name initial, the man’s first-name initial, so If Cruella De Ville and Winnie The Pooh married their monogram would be CPW. 
• For married couples with different names, it’s from left to right, the woman’s last-name initial, the man’s last-name initial. Or, for our couple, VP. Complicated isn’t it?

And how are those monograms being used?  I’ll explain it all in my next post …

Monogram image by Jules