Sometimes a t-shirt can be too good, it seems according a recent survey that 4 out of 5 Americans hold on to at least a couple of their favourite tees for donkey’s years. I’ll show you the graph soon in case you want to get technical, but rest assured, science aside, this is a well known fact.

I know from personal experience exactly what t-shirt obsession can mean, as do a lot of t-shirt bloggers, designers and fans in general, the funny thing I’ve noticed with myself and friends with a similar penchant for tees, is your fave shirts aren’t necessarily your best ones.

As one designer recently told me they’ve been wearing their old High School tee on and off for years, I used to wear a couple of rather corny Marvel Comics tees until they practically died on me, I remember in my late teens wearing a particularly groovy Indian t-shirt I picked up dirt cheap at a flea market so many times, that I had a mini-depression when it finally fell to pieces in the wash.

I’ve always wondered about the psychology of t-shirt obsession, not the usual kind, those who collect them by the hundreds, or those (like myself) who can’t help writing about them, but rather the strange attachment one can form towards one single tee. Perhaps it’s an associative effect, for instance, maybe you pick up a t-shirt the day you fall in love, or on a great holiday, or some other happy memory that subconsciously you attach to the t-shirt in question.

Who knows, I’m not a psychologist, I wouldn’t know for fact, I’m just guessing here, but it seems I’m not alone in my sentimentality for the humble tee. Here’s some science to back up the theory…

According to BlueCotton.com‘s research (using the Chicago market researcher Synovate), most people can’t help hanging on to at least a couple of tees, and the front runner is a holiday shirt, happy times make happy memories, hence my previous theory. Then again in second place is what I’d describe as freebie tees, most employers hand out company insignia tees all the time, and in general they are awful, I mean ugly ugly. So apart from the fact they’re free, why else would people want to hang on to them? Any old work shirts I have end up as clothes for doing dirty jobs, painting and decorating, renovating the house and so on. But frighteningly enough I seem to be in the minority on this one.

So here’s an even stranger theory, it’s all down to mind control. I’m sure most people don’t love their ex-employers so much that they’d consciously continue to promote them at every given opportunity. Therefore it must be down to habit, habit formed by a company’s policy, they provided a vast amount of structure and discipline in an individual’s life, or still do, and essentially those who wear these tees are in one way or another always “working for the man”, even in their spare time. Hmm… OK a little far-fetched but why on earth else would someone want to parade about with a corny company logo on their right pocket?

The sports and charity tees make more sense, you’re good at something or a do-gooder, but political tees, well perhaps a few are worth wearing like OBEY Giant’s Obama tees, but in the main I’d think, damn, you really have to love politics to keep hold of old election shirts. Especially if you backed a losing side!

Here’s what BC have to say about the subject: “Roughly 79 percent of the respondents still have an old shirt, averaging slightly more than 2.5 shirts per person; 788 people reported 2,124 shirts total among the various categories. Shirts from a vacation led the way by far across all demographic groups. While we tend to hang on to shirts from a concert, a favorite pro or college sports team, and a charity run/walk, we’re also fond of shirts from a business or employer.”

• According to the survey just 7 percent of the poll claimed they haven’t kept a shirt, compared with 21 percent of the overall population. Younger generations are far more likely than their older counterparts to keep a shirt from a concert (46.5 percent of 18-24, versus 27 percent of the overall population). That also goes for political tees – 10 percent, versus 6 percent overall.
• Yet there’s no age barrier to senTEEmentality! More than two-thirds (70 percent) of respondents age 65+ still hold onto a favourite tee.
• Sports fans far outweigh participants in sports – 27 percent keep a shirt from their favourite pro or college sports team, whilst just 17 percent have a shirt from a team they’d played for! Lazy so and so’s.
• Men are more likely than women to have a shirt from a pro or college sports team (30 percent, versus 24 percent, respectively). But the genders differed by only 3.5 percent when it comes to having a shirt from a sports team they were on (19 percent of men, and 15.5 percent of women).
• A whopping 30 percent of all respondents held on to a business or employer’s t-shirt!

Anyway enough of the statistics, rest assured that most of us out there have at least one grubby old t-shirt we can’t let go, then again I wonder if the same would apply to jeans, sweaters, boots, cars, books, hats, respective partners, outdated ideas, bad habits and favourite breakfast cereals? I’d say that it all comes down to the birth of civilisation, we, the human race were always hoarders, it’s probably what got us so far, if we hadn’t held on to what we had the cave would’ve been bare, and seeing as we don’t hibernate (well I try when I can), we had to store what we could whilst the going was good.

Besides, with the worldwide recession it’s no surprise that just about everyone out there wears at least one tatty old t-shirt, times are hard, prices are high, jobs are at risk, it’s back to basics everyone, it’s just the ebb and flow of the economy I suppose. If you are wearing a very old t-shirt, at least give it a good wash next time hah.