T-Shirt Stories (2011)

• 80%
• 2011
• Julien Potart
• Dimitri Pailhe

Easy to produce, the t-shirt is THE most basic and universal item of clothing. From Paris to Tokyo via Ouagadougou, everyone around the globe owns at least one t-shirt. Some use it to sleep in, some use it to run in, some use it to work in while others yet see it as an artistic medium, a means to demonstrate one's opinions. After 50 years in service and more than tens of billions of items sold, no film had yet told the epic story of the t-shirt. This film is designed as an absolute immersion in the t-type shirt universe: its history, its fans, its artistic scenes and its business. The documentary's aim is, using the t-shirt, to tell "classic" modern-day tales. Through examples from the United States, Japan, England, Sweden and France, T-Shirt Stories presents a mosaic of emblematic figures of a time, a movement, or simply of anonymous fans. In between historic images, animation sequences by Arthur King and an original soundtrack by The Shoes, the film is articulated around original characters you get to grow fond of. Be they businessmen, like Dov Charney, who sold t-shirts in the streets of Montreal before building the American Apparel Empire, skating legends like Tony Alva, world famous singers like Daniel Johnston, or key fashion figures like Johnny Makeup who collects Madonna t-shirts, each of the interviewees will share with you his or her passion for t-shirts.