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20.7.05 I Am Different, Just Like Everybody Else: Synthetic Experience and the Rise of the Ironic T-Shirt

America is both mother and stranger to me, and when I return to her I see patterns in her culture which I might never notice if I lived there. Last time, it was the Dessert Martini. This time, it is the Ironic T-Shirt. A British friend of mine wished to buy cheap American clothing in Los Angeles, so I drifted along in his wake as he went from shop to shop on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. Every store was loaded down with t-shirts advertising rock tours from 20 years ago; non-existent bars and resorts; and humorous slogans ranging from the wry to the cringe-making.

Logos and slogans on shirts fascinate me, possibly because I never wear them. I can understand brand logos, even as I despise them. They're unifying. They say that the wearer is part of a big style tribe: Nike, SeanJohn, Abercrombie & Fitch, whatever. There's a certain honesty in buying into brand logos. After all, we all secretly want to belong, even when we rebel. Look at any counterculture group: 90% of its members dress the same. A goth's New Rocks is the same as an investment banker's Hermes tie - a uniform we create for ourselves, a badge of membership in our subculture.

These ironic t-shirts communicate something very different, however: they suggest the wearer has had some individual and unique experience, that there is a story behind the shirt. But there never is, aside from "I bought it at Old Navy in the sale". Or even, for the pre-aged shirts with nostalgic brand names from our youth (Kix cereal, the A-Team, Aquaman), a suggestion that we got them at some out of the way vintage shop. Shopping, it seems, has become a socially valued experience in and of itself.

I can understand the boom in ironic t-shirts from the perspective that, at this point, there is no reason (other than personal eccentricity) to wear anything other than jeans and a t-shirt, anywhere. If jeans and t-shirt are the uniform of our time, it fuels a need for a greater range of stylistic choices in those two items. And a message on a t-shirt gives a little interest, which would be filled in the old days by a slight variation in cut of a jacket, or the restrained wit of a new shirt pattern.

I suspect that the commoditisation of the high street also has a hand in the rise of these t-shirts. Every year, as The Gap and Urban Outfitters and Abercrombie become more ubiquitous and we all move towards McFashion, there are fewer individual boutiques and bars from which cool, story-laden t-shirts can be bought. The ones that are left, such as the Black Dog in Martha's Vineyard, have become akin to the Hard Rock Cafe used to be, cliche destinations where one only goes for the shirt. (There is a thriving black market in vintage Black Dog t-shirts, as no true preppy wears one dated after 2000. It's like salting and pre-ageing Mount Gay caps from sailing races to achieve that perfect faded pink as fast as possible.)

If popular entertainment (especially film) is synthetic emotion - brief tourism into intense feeling, in discrete 100 minute packages and without long-term side effects - then the ironic t-shirt is synthetic experience. The old expression, "been there, done that, got the t-shirt" no longer seems to ring true for 95% of America. They skip the first two and go straight to the third. Is this a post-9/11 thing? People aren't travelling, aren't doing anything daring? Or is it a cultural homogenisation thing? There is nothing left that is interesting to do - it's all been overrun by franchise, or closed down because of liability concerns? Why are people content with buying ersatz uniqueness from high street vendors? My flatmate looks at me as if I'm stupid. "Because it's cheap," he says.

Of course, I write this with the smug superiority of a girl with a history. I have the 1994 King's Cup regatta shirt from Thailand; the 1991 Campus/Terrace Club Bong Pong shirt; the tattered old gig shirts from cult bands long broken up. Someone asks me what the slogan on my shirt means, I can tell them. I did these things. I earned this; I didn't just buy it in the sale. I have the scars to prove it.

Maybe it's a generational thing. When I was growing up, there was a sense that nothing mattered, so everything was possible. Kids were angry as hell, and our cri de guerre was "No Future". This generation's, it seems, is "No Past".

( 10:24 AM )

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