Vintage Rock T-Shirts

These artifacts of the original rock and roll era recall a time that seems simpler, less commercial, and more meaningful. The tee shirts shown here weren't produced for commercial use but as promotional giveaways by record companies, fans, and festivals such as Woodstock, and the designs from the early days look homemade and amateurish. As band shirts became available, record companies discovered the promotional power of the tee shirt as human billboard, and their lucrative potential was realized, with shirts bearing logos, band names, show venues, and other marketable details. Ultimately rock tee shirts worn with jeans and sneakers became a uniform of conformist non-conformism. Now the tee shirts from these early days have become one of today's hottest—and most costly—fashion trends. For many people, rock and roll has become a lifestyle. Vintage Rock Tee-Shirts is a snapshot of this earlier era, with hundreds of T-shirts, advertisements, logos, and archival photos.