T- Shirts: A Fashion Statement And Production

One might have hardly imagined that clothes used as an undergarment during 19th century will evolve as a fashion statement in 21st century and will be called as t- shirt or tee. T- Shirts were worn by miners and stevedores during 19 century as it was suitable and convenient for hot environment. But now T-Shirts have become a trend for all age groups and for both men and women. It is available in different design pattern and colours and is a very suitable to seasons garment.A T-Shirt is a kind of shirt without buttons and collars, which have short sleeves and usually with a round neck line. T-Shirts are manufactured out of cotton and some other fibres and are stitched as a jersey to give it a soft touch. Text and pictures are often used on T-Shirts to make it more meaningful and fashionable.It is popular by the name T-Shirt after the shape of its garment outline. T-Shirts are easy to fit, easy to clean,maintain and cheap. Hence they became popular among new generation. They are produced in different shapes, colours and patterns. In 1960s ringer T-shirts were very famous among youths. Gradually many manufacturers used different processes to decorate T-shirts like plastisol ink and tie-dyeing. Plastisol brought a revolution in T-Shirt printing. Among different methods used for decorating the T-Shirts most popular is screen printing.In screen T-Shirt printing, plastisol or water based inks are involved with the help of mesh screens and then colours are applied on the design. Generally process printing or stimulated process is applied in screen printing to decorate a T-Shirt. These processes produce a range of colours when there are limited numbers of colours. Process printing are applied on light coloured T- Shirts whereas stimulated process gives best results on dark coloured T-shirts. Nowadays in place of water based inks many companies are using plastisol as it can be used on a range of colours.Specialty inks like shimmer, puff, discharge and chino based inks are incorporated in screen printing. Specialty inks are very expensive and are used in boutiques. T-Shirts dyed using different colours were very popular in UK during 1980s but its main disadvantage was that the dye used to go while washing or it used to dye other clothes too.Apart from screen printing other methods which are used for beautifying T-Shirts are airbrush, appliqué, embroidery, embossing, heat transfers or dye- sublimation transfers. With the assistance of laser printer, designs are printed on plain papers with the help of special toner with sublimation dyes and then transferred on T-shirts with the help of the heat-transferred process.Nowadays, many websites have provided the opportunity to design and print our own T-Shirts online. This is known as Direct to garment or DTG printing. Previously DTG was not successful as it did not work on dark colours but now with the help of print manufacturers like T-jet even dark colour T-Shirts can also be printed with broad range of colour options.Nowadays, T-Shirts have become a popular tool for advertising, promoting products, companies, films and websites.