Fruit of the Loom is one of the oldest US garment manufacturers still active in the business today; it was founded in 1851 in Rhode Island as a quality cotton cloth and textiles producer. Later, the company expanded from nightshirts and underwear into classic mono-color T-shirts. Graphic T-shirts came into the public attention around the 1950s, when Miami-based company Tropix Togs acquired the exclusive rights from Disney to print images of Mickey Mouse and holiday resort names on its T-shirts.

A couple of decades later, the famed "I ?  New York" T-shirt was unveiled to the world. The original logo was by famed graphic designer Milton Glaser, who created it for the New York State Tourism Department in 1977 for free, not knowing that it would linger for years and inspire numerous cities to follow suit. It's estimated that New York State lawyers have filed more than 3,000 objections related to violations of its trademark.

Katharine Hamnett meets Margaret Thatcher, 1983 [Photo/Courtesy of Katharine Hamnett]

Though it's impossible to nail down a date, T-shirts certainly rose to prominence as tools of political activism in the 1980s. English fashion designer Katharine Hamnett created her series of oversized block-letter T-shirts, originally with the "Choose Life" slogan, in 1983. Hamnett was famously photographed shaking hands with British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, wearing her T-shirt that read "58% Don't Want Pershing" to reference the anti-militarisation stance of the British public. Thatcher was claimed to have "uttered a shriek of horror" when they met.