How many t-shirts do you think you own? Everyone I know has scads from different events, few of which they ever wear. My brother had almost a full tall bookcase of t-shirts (too many to fit in a dresser).
How many? Short sleeve? Long sleeve?
How many do you wear on a regular basis?
Where do they come from? Sports events you were in? Favorite sports teams? College shirts? Other events you’ve attended like concerts or charity fundraisers? Souvenirs from trips? Shirts you just thought were cool?
I just did laundry and counted:
11 regular short sleeve - I probably wear 3 or 4 regularly.
19 long sleeve - I wear almost all of them. In the winter I will easily go through 7-8 long sleeves a week.
14 cute “girl cut” - I almost never wear these but they’re too cute rid of.
The vast majority of my t-shirts are rowing related, mostly from races I’ve attended although some are crew shirts. A few are running races and the majority of the “girl cut” ones are band t-shirts.
I got a bunch. Some are 10 years old, some are two or three. I have most of my t-shirts from the Air Force (or business trips while on duty), but some are from my wife and my folks.
I can’t take an accurate inventory just yet, because it’s damn near . . . well, it is 1:AM, and I don’t want to make my wife suspicious.
Tripler
I have long sleeve t-shirts embroidered with a RED HORSE logo. Them’s my faves.
I used to have several hundred t-shirts; a combination of easy access to thrift stores and a taste for absurd/off-the-wall printed t’s led to me bringing home shirts by the garbage-bag-ful. (I see occasional mentions that bizarre/funny t-shirts are a phenomenon begun by the current emo scene, but it predated my own participation in the music scene in the late-80s/early-90s.) I purged heavily a few years ago, keeping plain shirts, shirts from shows and a few other printed ones, throwing out/redonating nearly everything else.
I still own over 100 shirts right now, 75% short-sleeved, 25% long sleeved. Due to a required color scheme at work, I have over two dozen plain navy blue shirts, and another 40 or so plain dark-colored t-shirts (burgundy, olive green, black, etc… or as my ex used to put my preferred color scheme: red-black, green-black, black-black, etc.-black) that see regular use.
I wear the navy blue shirts constantly for work, the plain non-navy shirts pretty regularly (especially black as an undershirt), when doing student teaching. My printed shirts, unfortunately, don’t fit into my life much any more, though I love some of them to pieces. They get work around the house, while cleaning or whatever, or when running errands.
Of the printed t-shirts, most are from concerts (~1989 to 2001), quite a few are vintage video game shirts (Atari logos, Pac-Man, Asteroids, whatever), and I kept my absolute favorite bizarre/funny shirts. It’s hard to recall that there was a time in my life when I happily wore a fitted hot pink “Seventeen Magazine Cover Model” shirt, but there it is in my closet. Similarly with my “Girl Scout Lock-In 1995” shirt, my “Snoopy in a yarmulke, toting an Israeli Flag and saluting” shirt… I also have a lot of school-function t-shirts; it is apparently law that one receive a shirt for every volunteer activity at school, and I get a new shirt every semester or so for doing mentoring and stuff.
Favorite shirt. A fitted black long-sleeve shirt from my school’s mentoring program; apparently, it’s fit just right for my lanky frame, and my ex molested me (in a good way!) everytime I wore it. She used to get pissed off if I wore it for normal shirt-wearing purposes, though-- she wanted it to last. She’s not around anymore, unfortunately, but I feel like I get checked out in public more often when I’m wearing it.
Oldest shirts. Oldest bought new: I have a number of shirts from 1992 that I still wear regularly. One is a 2-sided Sonic Youth shirt, with a comic-book-like drawing of people in space on the front, and Japanese text on the back. Another is a Lollapalooza 1992 shirt with a Mandlebrot set. A couple of Death and/or other Sandman character. Oldest bought used: a shirt advertising an “Eros,” an erotic art exhibition in NYC in 1974. Also from the 1970s, a Farrah Fawcett shirt (the infamous poster shot).
I have a bunch of t-shirts, and I wear them on weekends and after work. They are black shirts with a very few exceptions.
Most of the current bunch are from the Philly Tattoo Convention or from Jinxed in Philadelphia. I discovered Jinxed on my first visit to the Tattoo Convention. Two Jinxed T’s are currently my oldest and favorites. They are retired. The black cotton has gone almost red-brown. #1 fave shows a bloody clawhammer and says “She was asking for it.” They used to make one with a pair of bloody scissors that said “He had it coming.” I don’t know if that one is still available. The other one is a Jinxed logo.
Other faves:
Satan and Evil’s Sideshow
Micro Wrestling Federation (on the back it says “I support midget violence”)
Dave Fox’s Bride of Frankenstein from Jinxed
ETA: TV, did you row in Philadelphia at any point?
I wear t-shirts almost exclusively. But I only have about 50 of them. Around 30 that I wear to work and about 20 that are either not work appropriate or are in too worn for work. I have no longsleeve t-shirts at this time.
The shirts run from plain (white, blue, grey) to concert (BNL, Train, The Tragically Hip); from being a walking commercial (Charlie’s Soap) to being a walking PSA (Read Banned Books).
My current favorite: Curious George passed out on ether. I wear this one to work regularly.
Oldest t-shirt: Probably my sleeveless Thompson Twins concert shirt. It’s from 1984 and was a gift from somebody.
Favorite that I can’t wear very often because it’s falling apart: My KISW* Nudestock t-shirt. I didn’t get to go to Nudestock, but got the t-shirt in lieu of the KISW tattoo that was being promoted but fell through due to liability issues.
I have a Big Box O’T-Shirts. Nearly all of them are aviation-related, which I collected in the '80s/'90s. My favourite is one from X-West that depicts a crashed B-17 with a skeleton in it. There’s a joshua tree and a rickety sign pointing toward Edwards AFB. In the far background is a silhouette of a B-2 flying by. Around the outside is ‘Mojave Desert Flying Club’. That one’s retired, as they are not available anymore and the copyright holder will not allow any to be made. (I’ve often thought about having some made up for personal use.) I have a nice one in the collection from the now-defunct VA-122 squadron that was based at NAS Lemoore that flew A-7s.
The shirts I wear are a couple of black Virgin – Vancouver ones, a couple of black (and one grey) skull-and-crossbones ones that say ‘The beatings will continue until morale improves’, a white one that I got free from some aviation store, a Navy blue short-sleeve from Ron Jon’s, and a black long-sleeved one from Brady’s Oysters that says ‘Shuck me, suck me, eat me raw’.
My first ‘special’ T-shirt (i.e., a T-shirt with something on it) I got when I was about 11 or 12. It was white, and on the back in alternating red and black iron-on letters was ‘HIGH DESERT FLYERS’. My dad was stationed at the Barstow-Daggett Airport, and I got it from the club at an air show. It’s possible I still have it somewhere, its letters all but missing, in a box somewhere.
Oh, and I had a couple of KCBQ Streak Team T-shirts I won by calling in when I was a kid.
I’m sure I have well over 100 but they’re scattered throughout so many drawers, boxes, laundry baskets and piles-of-clothes-I’m-too-lazy-to-sort-through that I couldn’t do an accurate inventory. Most of them are short sleeve single pocket Ts, because I have a thing for them. I think they look good on me and I have no sales resistance to buying them on sale at Target or Shopko in a rainbow of colors. “Oooh, I don’t have one in that exact shade of burnt orange!”
I have gay pride t-shirts dating back to the second one I went to, Chicago 1989 (the first was in Madison that same year but I didn’t get a shirt). Some of them are getting quite ragged and I used them as workout clothes (and need to start again).
I have some souvenir shirts from my trip to NYC a few years back, one for each of the shows we saw. I deeply regret not getting one of those I Heart NY shirts. I have a shirt from Great America with Gossamer on it, a Jack Daniels shirt from a bar giveaway and some freebie shirts from a couple of online poker sites who no longer do business in the United States.
Oh, geez, I don’t have the energy to go sort all of mine, and count. I can answer the other questions, though. My favorite is probably my Threadless “Foxy” t-shirt. The oldest is for a local bar that doesn’t exist anymore. Himself bought it for me to sleep in when we were dating. We’ve been married 14 years.
I might be able to beat Student Driver’s Farrah Fawcett shirt as the oldest t-shirt still in rotation. My high school sold heavyweight Champion tees that looked like football jerseys with our school name and year of graduation on the front. I graduated in 1981 but they printed them up for each new freshman class so I probably bought the shirt in '78 or '79. Anyway, it’s pretty threadbare now and both armpits have become ventilated so it’s been designated as the shirt that gets worn to bed the night before laundry day. Still, I refuse to part with it. Dang, I hated high school but it used to be a really nice shirt.
Do fitted “girly” V-neck stretch knit shirts from the Gap/Old Navy etc. count as T-shirts?
This will greatly affect the results of this inventory. If yes, then I have about thirty-five T-shirts. Five of which are long-sleeved, four of which are 3/4 sleeves.
If not…if “T-shirt” is defined by the style you can buy from Hanes in packages of 3…then I own less than five.
The oldest one being a Paul McCartney New World Tour concert T-shirt…that one’s almost fifteen years old. I was fifteen when I paid $35 bucks for it and I wore the damn thing out.
I have perhaps twenty in all. They’re kind of scattered, and some are still in storage after ten years, so I don’t have an exact count.
Most of them don’t fit anymore, so I wear about eight of them regularly, but only for working out. I never wear T-shirts just to walk around anymore.
A few army issue. Five T-shirts from a company I worked for back in the day. A few Russell athletic T-shirts I bought just for exercising, a Newbury Comics T-shirt my wife got me for my birthday (I love Newbury), and a tie-dye Dr. Seuss T-shirt with Green Eggs and Ham.
My favorite is definitely the Dr. Seuss tie-dye, and Mrs. Fresh always laughs when I wear it for a workout. It’s loud and goofy, just like me.
My oldest are the army issue, and one of my weight loss goals is to one day be able to work out in them again. I’m getting there, too.
I’ve probably got over 500, the majority of which are of my own design, coming from an annual event that I’ve thrown for 27 years. I always make way more than people who show up. I plan or selling them eBay in 20 years to support my retirement. I think I own about 10 long sleeve t-shirts. I never wear them. Nevertheless, I’m sure I’ve got well over 150 purchased t-shirts.
I’ve got maybe 50 t-shirts in regular rotation. Every once in a while I’ll come across a box of them and toss them back into circulation.
I probably own 15 Rosarito-Ensenada Bike ride T-shirts, although only 2 are currently worn.
The largest category of T-shirts is rock band. I’m currently wearing a “Doe” T-shirt that is a parody of a Dole Pineapple logo because I went and saw John Doe last night. The second largest category is bars. Third is destination travel t-shirts. The fourth largest category is intramural softball and ultimate frisbee teams. i’ve probably got 20 of them.
My oldest T-shirt is a Monroe High School gym T-shirt that I inherited from my brother, who is 5 years older. That would make it vintage 1967, or 41 years old. Do I win anything?
Ohh, I miss Ruby Montana! I’m so coveting your shirts right now!
All of my T-Shirts come from thrift stores, with the exception of three plain white Hanes ones that came from Costco. A quick tally shows I have 11 T-shirts in various solid colors.
My favorite printed one is from the Buddhist Temple in Chicago. It has an anime-style rabbit on it holding one of those gong-banging-type hammers (I think), with the full moon apparently symbolizing the gong (Again, I think.) The nice lady at my favorite Chinese restaurant says the Chinese characters on the shirt say “Rabbit Moon.”
My next favorite shirt is from Tunisia, though it says Tunisie (French, n’est ce pas?) It’s outline-stitched to show a couple of camels and some palm trees. Even though it’s a medium, it’s still way too small for me. They must have tiny tourists there. Oh well, one of these days.
Third favorite is from Vienna, Austria. It has three sets of flowers in pots embroidered on it in nice vibrant colors. The most standard touristy shirt in my collection but still pretty.
I also have one from the Pizza-Pasta Factory in Cedar City, Utah and one promoting a trading card game called Duel Masters. And I have a striped shirt in blues, purples and pinks.
