Darrell Delaney is ambling about Union Station one recent evening, trying to attract girls in his oversize, mass-produced, preshrunk cotton white T-shirt. It hangs on his 125-pound body like a fallen parachute. And it belongs to his mother, Darrell mumbles, when asked what "kind" of tee it is.
Ho-kay, one more time: Hanes, Luxe, Galaxy? "My mom's," the 13-year-old says, bowing his head and dipping his shoulder for a tag inspection, which reveals the name of an Australian company that specializes in plus-size women's clothing. Oh, snap!
When there is nothing else to wear, and nothing to prove, the white tee emerges -- fashion as anti-fashion. Tabula rasa of the street. Without logos, stripes or cartoon characters, it is remarkable for its complete blankness. It can be bought at Sears, or even at gas stations. Five for $20. Available in every season and size -- preferably XXXXL.
For all its plainness, the white T-shirt refuses to be ignored. A few years ago the street fad was Gucci, very gaudy. Then it was $300 retro sports jerseys that snuffed out life savings. Now, frugality: In a trend cheered on last summer by Dem Franchize Boyz' crunk ode "White Tees," the world is now seemingly filled with boys and men in the gigantic shrouds, billowing over baggy jeans and throwback Nikes.
It brings to mind 1990s West Coast rapper wear and it has found critics among both the fashion police and the actual baton-wielding deputies: Some law enforcement officials consider it the street uniform du jour for drug dealers, gang members and thieves, a criminal ensemble featured in maddeningly broad radio dispatches: The suspect was last seen wearing a white T-shirt and dark pants.
Or in police blotters, as accessory to a harebrained scheme -- "Two gunmen in a fast-food restaurant covered their faces with white T-shirts, struck an employee in the head . . ." Or as a coveted item: "Two males, one with a gun, approached a male unloading boxes of merchandise in an alley. A wallet and a box of white T-shirts were taken."
The bad rap on the classic tee has implicated adolescents. Earlier this year, school administrators in North Carolina handed a 10-day suspension to a white-teed student, charging that he violated the dress code prohibiting gang clothing. In Cleveland, a city council member complained to a local TV station in August about young men in oversize white tees "terrorizing" his neighborhood. (NewsChannel5 cuts to the clip of black teens strolling down a tree-shaded sidewalk.) The councilman then called on inner-city gas stations to stop selling the shirts.
For all the profiling and small-minded punishment, many white-T aficionados seem blissfully unaware. At Union Station, Darrell dallies away the evening with a handful of guy friends, each not appearing the least bit critical that he wore his mother's white T-shirt. It happens; other big white tees were dirty. Then the group leader squints and soon Darrell is turning his head in embarrassment.
"Look, stains," points out Marcus Stone, 18. "And there's a hole right there. I can spot 30 things on your shirt." They are mostly beige blemishes on a snow-white canvas. "Girls notice everything," he warns.
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"I've always thought of the T-shirt as the Alpha and Omega of the fashion alphabet," Giorgio Armani wrote in an introduction to a 1996 book called "The White T."
"The creative universe begins with its essentiality, and, whatever path the imagination takes, ends with its purity. . . . I love the T-shirt as an anti-status symbol, putting rich and poor on the same level in a sheath of white cotton that cancels the distinctions of caste."
