Back in the early 2010s, fashion writers were hoping slogan t-shirts are on their way out. Back then, we were dealing with a lot of “cute but deadly” and “sexy princess” type of statements on people’s chests. And let’s not forget about all the wine mom and beer dad classics, as well as the pathetic remnants of hustle culture in the shape of a coffee lover’s t-shirt.

However, proclaiming your stance on beverages and other urgent topics is far from over. In fact, in recent years, slogan t-shirts have been elevated to runway-worthy fashion. Dior came out with “We should all be feminists” while Givenchy slapped “I feel love” together with a 200-dollar price tag on a simple white tee and people couldn’t get enough.

Slogans even found their place on red carpets. Celebrities often use them to voice their stance on various issues. Many celebs wore “Time’s Up” shirts, pins, and bags in the beginning of the Me Too movement in support of a non-profit organization that helps victims of sexual harassment. Many of them also wear outfits with explicit statements encouraging people to vote. So, slogans are not always useless.

Slogan t-shirts actually have quite honorable beginnings. Wearing them largely began in the US, in the mid-twentieth century when various social movements were on the rise. To this day, slogan t-shirts are a part of social activism. It is a very straightforward way to openly disclose and stand by your beliefs. It allows people to identify themselves and announce their association or affinity for a certain group or movement.

Victoria Clarke, a lecturer in the University of Bristol, once did that and, inadvertently, found out the power that a slogan shirt can have on the people around you. She came to one of her lectures wearing a t-shirt that said “Some people are gay. Get over it!” She assumed that most would share her “amused appreciation of the playful slogan,” while students who did not agree would simply keep it to themselves. 

However, many students reacted to it quite negatively, thinking she was implying that they were homophobic. They complained about Clarke to their representatives and described her in the end-of-the-year evaluation as “despicable,” “biased,” “selfish,” “offensive,” and “sexist.” Some of them stated that she wore the t-shirt “a lot” even though she only wore it twice and assumed she is immature and seeking to stand out. She later published a study analyzing the response and came to a conclusion that while people are homotolerant, society is still very heteronormative. She never wore that shirt again.

T-shirts can communicate subtle messages that maybe would be too controversial to say out loud. Celebrities especially love to make use of this. The classics go back to early 2000s when Britney Spears infamously wore a T-shirt that read “Dump Him” days after her then recent ex Justin Timberlake made it official with his new girlfriend. Then there was Naomi Campbell who wore a “Naomi hit me… and I loved it” t-shirt after being accused of getting into a physical altercation with her maid. But this not a thing of the past, either. A more recent and less controversial instance happened with singer Charlie XCX, who wore a t-shirt that said “Real Winner” in an afterparty for the Brits award ceremony, which she left empty-handed.

Studies on t-shirts with slogans are minimal, but fascinating. One of them, published in 2022, found that over 70% of respondents liked slogans on t-shirts. It also concluded that t-shirts with text on them can be found all over the price range in all sorts of brands, from very affordable fast fashion stores to leading sportswear companies, to exclusive designer brands. Another interesting data point is the most common slogans. Nike takes the cake there with “Just do it,” “Equality,” and “Force is female” all in the top 5. 

The reasons why people like t-shirts with slogans vary depending on the type of text on it. For example, phrases like “I love my dog” and “Tacos are always a good idea” are created to build an emotional connection with those who love their dogs and tacos respectively. Inspiring messages such as “Work Train Win” and “Impossible is nothing” aim to illicit positive feelings and motivate the consumer. Wordplay slogans that use puns or rhymes (“No prob-llama” and “Follow me to Tennessee”) want to attract attention and make you giggle.

These days, it seems that more political or inspiring tees are getting a tinge of sarcasm to them. The statements on them are often still poignant but they are presented with an unusual design (“Stop transphobia” shirt with a transformer on it) or a design that makes you chuckle (“Scared of the future” written in “Back to the future” font). Visible self-deprecation and self-loathing are trendy with shirts such as “I’m not sure I can be fixed” and “I carry my trauma wherever I go” being part of a long list of options. It’s appreciated by many who, in the face of many crises around the world, traded their optimism for more brutal realism. Those types of shirts are also more social-media-worthy.

Wearing t-shirts from this list can also be quite controversial, even for non-celebrities. Provocative and hilarious, they should be great conversation starters for the ones that are not afraid to be bold. And those of us who are too shy will continue snapping secret photos of attention seekers and posting them online for everyone’s enjoyment. It’s a win-win for all!