THE WIZARD OF OZ May Have Invented This Common Piece of Clothing

Graphic t-shirts with images on them displaying your favorite musician, sports team, or characters have been ubiquitous since the ’50s. But would you believe the graphic t-shirt might actually have originated somewhere over the rainbow? In a video which you can watch below from Alex Rabinowitz of Pop Culture Brain (via Laughing Squid), we learned that the first documented graphic t-shirts appearing in film were in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz. We see them for mere seconds on workers in the Emerald City, getting Tin Man and Scarecrow back into shape. They are green shirts that simply have the words “Oz” in white font written on them. Simple, but revolutionary.

The t-shirt itself didn’t become popular in North American society until after World War II. In the early part of the 20th century, the t-shirt existed merely as an undergarment. No one would dream of going outside the house wearing one. And if you watch movies of the Golden Age of Hollywood, you don’t see them in anything but that capacity. During World War II, soldiers started wearing them as outerwear. And that continued after the war. And by the 1950s, actors like Marlon Brando and James Dean began appearing with them in iconic films. Soon, every teenager in America would go out wearing a t-shirt, making it a symbol of youth culture. And before long, companies started selling t-shirts with printed images to teens, and later, adults.

MGM/Warner Bros.

As the video states, no one really knows if The Wizard of Oz costume designer saw a graphic t-shirt somewhere, or if he invented it expressly for the film. But most pop culture historians lean toward the latter, believing he invented the graphic t-shirt to evoke the otherworldly universe of Oz. As everyone knows, The Wizard of Oz is one of the most popular pieces of cinema ever produced. But it may be that because of it, we have this very common article of clothing that today everyone has in their closet.

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