Beth Ann Gallagher

Most people think clothes only serve a practical function, such as protecting you from the elements or preserving your modesty. In reality, one clothing's biggest role is semiotic (communicating meaning through symbols). That is why we keep the stitched-down pleats on trucker jackets and the holes on wingtips. Without these elements, their meaning changes. This semiotic function is clearest in graphic T-shirts. Almost immediately after their invention at the turn of the 20th century, people started printing messages on them—first about affiliation with certain organizations, such as sports teams and military divisions, before moving on to politics, music, and the infinite cultural interests we see on T-shirts today. Even the plain white T-shirt has meaning. The T-shirt comes from a curious 19th-century form of women's underwear called the union suit, a one-piece garment that covered the entire body. Men soon picked up the practical item and, by the turn of the 20th century, the top detached from the bottom, giving us the template for the T-shirt. For a while, the T-shirt was considered underwear not meant to be seen in public. But over the first half of the 20th century, it started to acquire meaning — the heroism of US servicemen fighting abroad and the rebellion of working-class youths in the postwar period who defiantly wore theirs with blue jeans and black leather jackets. Perhaps its most important meaning came when Marlon Brando wore a white T-shirt stretched across his torso in the 1953 film The Wild One. This gave the T-shirt its most potent symbolism: sex appeal. The breast pocket remains on suit jackets and sport coats for the same reason Western shirts have yokes, or why "masculine-coded" jeans are blue. These items appeared at some point for various reasons, sometimes practical. But through their use in society, they acquired meaning. If you change these elements, you are no longer communicating the same thing. They persist because most people dress to communicate certain things about their identity, even if they don't say it. Once you understand that clothing is about semiotics, it's easier to get dressed, build a wardrobe, and understand why certain elements remain on clothes.