A guide to Identifying 90s T Shirts

There are several way to know if a T-shirt is from the 90s, including looking at the print, the fade and the sizing, but the three most practical ways are the tags, the stitching and looking for any dates printed on the shirt. 

With the rise of Depop, the term "vintage" has become a very vague term used to describe anything the preowned, but technically speaking in the fashion industry, vintage means 20+ years old. Back in the 90s, clothes were made differently and arguably better. Back then there were much fewer high street and online brands that dominate today such as ASOS, Boohoo and TopShop. So straight of the bat, it's very unlikely anything from modern brands like that will be from the 90s. Back then, the main t shirts people purchased were sportswear brands such as Nike, Adidas and Reebok, and graphic prints. This guide will mostly cater to these specific categories. We have also created a YouTube guide if you'd rather a visual aid

1) Is the T-Shirt dated?

Many vintage t shirts are very obviously dated where the year it was made is on the print itself, such as a t shirt made for the 1996 olympics. However, what you may not know is that is in very fine small print, nearly 80% of graphic print t shirts will have a dated copyright notice underneath the main graphic, which would be there to ensure the artists had legal rights for no one else to copy that design. 

This is the easiest way to identify 90s t shirts but not all tees have a date which is why you might need the next two tips. The dates might also be misleading as some t shirts are made years in advance of the competition or event they're being made for and some graphics might be used years after they've been created. This is especially true for ongoing events and tv shows that create merchandise consistently, so the print might have been designed in 1997, but the t shirt was made in 2002.

2) Check the tag

The tag can give away many hints about the age of a tee, by its design, its thickness and the brand. In terms of sportswear, most brands would use a specific tag over a certain time period, so if you do some research on the tag that brand made in the 90s, that should be able to tell you when it was made. Here are two infographics produced by @ralphsss_vintage for Nike and Adidas to help you with them.

Graphic print tags become a bit trickier and require a bit more experience to master. Nowadays, 90% of graphic print t shirts are produced on Gildan, Fruit of the Loom or Uneek blanks. In the 90s, the main blanks used were Screen Stars, Hanes, Fruit of the Loom or Jerzees but they were loads more smaller branded blanks that would be used as well. Screen stars stopped producing t shirts around 2002, so most screen stars t shirts will be from the 90s, but again you need to know your tags as shown in the infographic below made by @spelloutdye.

If you aren't sure about the tag, the physical appearance of the tag can be used to harness a guess as to whether it's from the 90s. Most tags back then were either very thick with a high thread count, or wafer thin with printed text. Many would also fade and shrink over the years so that the text has now disappeared completely and the tag is very fragile. After a while you just begin to learn the 90's aesthetic and can tell instantly.

3) The stitching

What does single stitch mean?. "Single Stitch" is a term you might have heard people talk about but have no idea what they're referring to. Many t shirts, mostly between 1992-98, would be made using only a single stitch line on the sleeves and hem of the shirt, mostly to produce the shirts cheaper. Check the pictures to see the difference. Elsewhere on the shirt, the stitching was different on 90s shirts as they would create much thicker collars than modern shirts and boxier fits. 

There are some exceptions to the single stitch rule in that some shirts would have been made single stitch into the early 00s and many modern brands such as Hollister and Abercrombie have using single stitching (obviously these aren't vintage) so don't take it as insurance. On the flip side, some shirts made between 1992-98 were also made using double stitching so equally don't be thrown of by that. Single-stich t shirts are a big thing that people look for though when looking for vintage t shirts, so when you have one for sale, make sure to include that in the description

At Leech Vintage, we are one of the UKs largest sellers of vintage graphic print t shirts so make sure to check out our collection