Vintage t-shirts are becoming popular due to the trend of sustainability within the fashion industry. Buying clothing secondhand is a great way to fight the environmentally unsound market of fast fashion. This post will serve as the most basic guide to purchasing vintage t-shirts in thrift stores, sifted thrift stores, upscale resale shops, or online marketplaces like eBay.
Tags
The first thing you should check when authenticating a vintage t-shirt is the tag. The tag will illicit where the shirt was manufactured as well as the brand of the shirt. These are two very important factors to account for when identifying vintage t-shirts.
Made in the USA
Prior to the 2000s, many t-shirt companies produced their shirts in the USA. However, producing t-shirts overseas has allowed companies to produce their shirts with much lower expense due to cheap international labor. This explains why many vintage shirts dating prior to the 2000s are made in the USA.
Tag History
In addition to looking for tags that say, "Made in the USA", you should just check the tag and search that specific brand's tag history online. There are many references online that show a brand's t-shirt tag along with the decade associated with its year of manufacturing.
 |
| Ex. of a Made in USA Tag |
 |
| Ex. of a Modern Tag |
Single Stitch
The next thing to analyze is the construction of the supposed vintage t-shirt. Single stitch refers to a highly prevalent manufacturing method used in the apparel industry prior to the mid 90s. Single stitch vintage t-shirts will have a single row of stitches securing the fabric edge on a hem.
Modern t-shirts produced in the 2000s are more likely to have two rows of stitches securing the sleeves, bottom hems and shoulders.
 |
| Ex. of a Single Stitch Sleeve |
 |
| Ex. of a Double Stitch Sleeve |
Dated Graphics
Aside from tags and t-shirt construction, you should also be looking for dated graphics. Some graphics will have a small year printed near the bottom of the graphic. This year tells the consumer when the graphic was printed/created.
 |
| Ex. of a Dated Graphic from 1994 |
Use these tips as a basic guide for buying vintage t-shirts at the thrifts or online with sites like eBay. Good luck!
This was very informative!
ReplyDeleteThank you Grace!
DeleteBeing that I'm interning in a thrift store style store, these tips were very helpful and I can use them to differentiate different brands and stitching structures!
ReplyDeleteGlad to help! Check out my other posts on single stitch t-shirts for some more info :) https://archivedvintageclothing.blogspot.com/2020/03/what-is-single-stitch-t-shirt.html
Delete