Perhaps the most novel and popular garment of this century is the T-shirt. This is because it is an informal wear and is very comfortable. Both men and women of all shapes and sizes wear it. The garment is named after the alphabet “T” because of its physical resemblance. This raiment has cast its spell on all types of people. From very young to old, from manual labourers to Yuppies, from students to drop-outs, we can see everyone wearing it to their comfort.

More than being simply an apparel, it has become a great medium of expressing one’s attitude. Like the graffitists in the US or Europe, the designers have strewn their ideas from the witty to the sarcastic, from sublime to vulgar, from spiritual to anti-religious in this

walking canvas. I recall a cartoon strip in a magazine (Reader’s Digest) where a young kid exclaims in surprise, “Look pa, he has got a strange T-shirt, nothing is written on it.” Such hackneyed are sayings on T-shirts. A second variety of T-shirt is the one with photographs of singers, bands, players, WWE wrestlers, cine stars, etc.

I assume that mostly youths wear it to show their unswerving loyalty to their icons though I recall a bhariya (porter) in a remote part of Nepal wearing a Stone Cold (of WWE fame) T-shirt who probably hasn’t even seen a TV in his lifetime.

A T-shirt can become a good souvenir from someone who has visited some place or it might be a relic of one’s college or university days. The Taj Mahal, the Great Wall, The Statue of Liberty, the elephant symbolising Thailand etc. can be good examples of this.

In any case, I must admit that T-shirt designing is a creative field. I have a fresh memory of one quite creative T-shirt, which I came across recently. Che Guevera (the communist rebel whose T-shirt sales worldwide might have surpassed that of Bob Marley or David Beckham) asking Kem Che? (i.e. how are you in the Gujarati language)? But one instant of a year back still lingers in my mind.

A kid of about four years holding his mother’s hand flaunting that ubiquitous T-shirt (a reflection of majority of the youths’ woes): No Money? No Problem. No Car? No Problem. No Job? No Problem. Guess What? No date...