The Independent - London, January 18th, 1997
The T-shirt, or at least the T-shirt as we know it, was born in the theatre. When Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire premiered in New York on 3 December, 1947, Marlon Brando took to the stage wearing a pair of indigo trucker's pants, a malevolent leer and a bright, white capped-sleeve T-shirt wrapped around his incontestable frame. It was the first time it had appeared publicly as anything but an undergarment; not because of director Elia Kazan's prior stage direction, but because Brando had worn one - and only one - to rehearsals.
The actor may have copied his impoverished peers (...
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