As You Stripe It : Nerd alert! Surfer-style T-shirts are back in those awful color combinations.
Fashion trends have multiple lives. And like films, the originals don’t have to be great to warrant a remake. Case in point: striped T-shirts. They’re making another touchdown on the fashion timeline.
“It’s a nerdy surfer look,” says fashion designer Todd Oldham, who, even with that disparaging remark, admits he’s quite enamored of the oversized T’s in atrocious color combinations that are disappearing from the shelves in the Gap and surf shops around town.
Such shirts were last seen in the ‘60s. The fabric was a combination of cotton and the new wonder fiber--polyester. Big name surfers Greg Noll, Hobie Alter, Dewey Weber and Tom Morey, endorsed the Hang Ten shirts, which cost less than $10.
Wanna-be beach boys bought the shirts by the pound. Owning a Hang Ten shirt carried the same cache as owning a piece of Stussy or Mossimo does today.
As the popularity of the striped surf shirts was cresting, the trend moved inland, and--stricken with the dweeb factor--sputtered and died in the Corn Belt.
About 30 years later Hang Ten has resurrected the shirts in the same colors and stripe patterns. The cut is a little roomier and the heavy-weight knit fabric is now 100% cotton. The price has gone up, $35 for a short-sleeved single-pocket T.
The Gap has them in 100% cotton for $16. The fabric is a lighter weight than Hang Ten’s knit, but the colors combinations are just such as intentionally yucky: ivory, dark red and army surplus green.
Costume designers for trendy television shows are using them. Just last week on “Melrose Place,” Grant Show wore a Hang Ten striped shirt--’90s-style, with a hood. The striped Ts are showing up at raves, in high schools and on the backs of gray-haired guys who lament not keeping their originals, especially now that the price has tripled.
Oldham bought several of the Gap’s striped shirts to wear during his immortalization by photographer Herb Ritts for a Gap ad. In fact, Oldham says he likes the look of stripes so much, they will probably show up in his spring collections.
