How can you tell if a t-shirt is actually vintage? There are a number of details to look for and questions to ask. So let’s assume a t-shirt falls from the sky and lands in your hands.

If you answer “Yes” to most of the questions in a section, then you’ve likely found the age of your t-shirt. If you answer “No” to most questions, then keep moving down the list.

Is my Vintage t-shirt actually, just new?

If your t-shirt comes from a brand, not a manufacturer, then it’s probably not a vintage t-shirt. Old Navy, Forever 21, American Eagle, Aeropostale, and other brands make comfortable t-shirts with rad graphics that imitate actual vintage pieces. But these are not the tees you’re looking for, even if they’re twenty years old. Although some brands, such as 90s GUESS and Polo, have some vintage cachet, your average mall brand does not.

I’m not sure why this took so long to catch on, but it’s a fairly recent trend and often indicates a t-shirt is from the 2010s or later. A printed tag is often a dead giveaway, too, of a reprint: If a Rolling Stones t-shirt has “Rolling Stones” printed on the interior of the neck, then it’s not vintage. T-Shirt rights were often licensed to printers and manufacturers, like Winterland or Giant. But bands and movie franchises didn’t brand their own until the 21st century.

Brands like Bella Canvas, American Apparel, Alternative Apparel, and others introduced the long tag somewhere in the last ten years or so. I’ve never seen a true vintage t-shirt with it, though it’s possible a tour tee from 2011 might be worth something sooner than later.

Generally speaking,  the word “vintage” indicates the piece is not in fact vintage. But so too do other recent buzzwords. If it promotes sustainability, equitable manufacture, or some other such thing, then it’s not likely vintage. (Shout-out to Gildan Grape, though.)

Likewise, the explicitly branded “Tear-Away” tag is also recent. Earlier tags were often torn away, but they weren’t advertised as such. You just tore it off.

Is my Vintage t-shirt from the early 2000s or late 90s or so?

The double tag was common by the end of the 90s. You’ll see it on Gildan, Hanes, and Fruit of the Loom tees. The top tag contains the logo and size, while the under tag contains laundering and fiber information in multiple languages. Such depth of information wasn’t required earlier in the decade, so its presence can help indicate age.

NAFTA! The North American Free Trade Agreement, ratified in 1994, made it cheaper and easier for major t-shirt brands to open up or contract factories in places like El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Honduras. So they did! And while it would have been cool to leverage purchasing power discrepancy to improve the livelihoods of people in other countries while lowering costs for consumers, most manufacturers just took advantage of labor laws and kept the profits for themselves.

Much of the vintage t-shirt discourse revolves around the phrase “single stitch.” And we’ll get to that. But quite a few awesome vintage t-shirts from the late 90s are not single stitch. So, relying on the cuffs method and nothing else will cause you to miss out.

Is my Vintage t-shirt from the mid to late 90s or so?

Domestic t-shirt manufacturing persisted toward the end of the century, even as most production was moved to other countries. So, made in the USA tees could still be from the late 90s.

There’s this weird turnover period in the lore of single stitch tees where the cuffs were single stitched and the hems were double stitched. Generally, tees with this construction, often from Jerzees and Russell, are from the mid 1990s.

If a t-shirt has a double-stitched cuff and it’s made in the USA, it’s probably from the last five years of the twentieth century.

Is my Vintage t-shirt from the mid 90s to late 80s?

Fruit of the Loom and Hanes are your dominant tags from this era, and they’re generally similar in construction: A single piece of nylon fabric with the logos printed or embroidered into the the tag itself. Many other tags from the era, like Winterland and Giant and Liquid Blue, use a similar construction.

The information can be printed on the tag, too. That’s what you’ll see on 3D Emblem and Sneakers and earlier Screen Stars tags. These trend earlier, but the time frame here isn’t broad enough to claim a clear distinction.

Again, not a fool-proof determinant, but the majority of t-shirts I find from this era are US-made.

Here’s where things are consistently single stitched, and it’s why the construction is such a useful marker of vintage t-shirts. If the cuff is single stitched (and it’s not from Hollister) then your t-shirt is likely from the mid 90s or earlier.

And again, most t-shirts from this era are single stitched throughout.

Is my Vintage t-shirt from the mid to early 80s or so?

The beige Screen Stars tag is a personal favorite. And to be honest, I’m not sure what it’s made of. But it’s a distinct departure from the sturdier black nylon tag. It’s also not the only tag of its kind: Ched, Velva Sheen, and Spring Ford all used tags that might crumble away after a few hard washes.

This style of tag is most prevalent in the early 80s. But to be clear, there’s a lot of overlap. Hanes, for example, went straight from Cotton to Nylon.

Is my Vintage t-shirt perhaps from the 70s?

These are a personal favorite tag type, and they generally fell out of favor by the 80s. I’m sure they were expensive to produce, and the colors faded fast. Sportswear, Hanes, BVD, Belton, and Mayo Spruce all used heavy fabric tags.

Of course, not all tags from this era used a cotton tag. But t-shirt manufacturers from this era didn’t really think of themselves as brands yet; they thought of themselves as wholesalers. Many tags from this era contain little to no information about the company that produced them.

It’s not a fool-proof determinant (we say that a lot) but numeric sizing faded away by the mid 80s. If your tag tells you that t-shirt is only size 40, rather than just a Medium, there’s a good chance it’s from the 70s. Throughout the 80s, tags might say “L 42-44” before only “Large” was used.

Caveats and Considerations

Copyright Date
9 times out of 10, the copyright date on a t-shirt will correspond to the date of manufacture. But this can go wrong in two ways:

  1. The t-shirt was manufactured, then sat in a screen-printer’s warehouse for a decade before getting printed. That means the physical shirt itself is much older than the graphic.
  2. The t-shirt was printed with an old graphic. That doesn’t mean it’s fake, of course. While a superstar rock band might keep on top of things like copyright, a museum or small business might not. So a shirt dated to the 80s might actually be from the early 2000s.

FAKES
We’re not gonna get into fakes here, but rest assured they’re out there in droves. It’s simple, for example, to buy an iron-on graphic, a deadstock blank, and claim you’ve got a true vintage piece. If you’re planning to spend a lot of money on a vintage piece, buy from an established, trusted seller.