The graphic t-shirt is one of the pinnacles of the hip-hop wardrobe, but the history of the medium itself goes back to before the first MCs began to spit their verses. To explore the development of the classic graphic tee, Complex has posted a comprehensive oral history, from the surf shirts of the ’80s to the “nuclear winter” that the recent Recession wrought on the exploding market. With comments from such giants of the industry as Shepard Fairey, Mark Ecko and Bobby Hundreds, the article is a must-read for anyone remotely interested in what we now call “streetwear”.

Eric Haze: Up to that point the market had pretty much been surf/skate. The tipping point was when hip-hop—the Beastie Boys, Public Enemy and the like—started to cross over and influence what everybody was doing….

Haze: There was probably not 25 hip-hop influenced clothing companies in the whole world in ’93. Between the Triple 5 Souls and the ConArts and Haze and FUCT and Pervert and XLarge there was a very small, tight-knit community of people who were reinventing the game….

Kaves: It opened up doors for anything street culture to [be] put on a T-shirt.

Shepard Fairey: I never even thought it would get as big as it is now. In 1994, I was at the 432F trade show and Marc Ecko was manning his 10×10 booth directly next to me with like a foam cut-out logo as his only piece of signage or prop. None of the crazy extravagant booths that he got into just two years after that.

Via Complex

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