Say it with your whole chest: T-shirts as everyday joy and radically soft resistance

Abstract

This article explores the power of t-shirts and ‘honouring rituals as activism’ in fashion to move people towards paradigmatic transformation and activate civil conversations about global socio-cultural change. Resistance or memorial clothing serves as a visual call for important principles to remain seen and heard, and offers ways of honouring ancestors and role models, and sharing love, grief and hope in a ‘radically soft’ way.

The article outlines a brief history of resistance t-shirts in South Africa and elsewhere, and shows how fashion (and Fashion), as wearable art, keeps expanding on these traditions, offering new (and old) symbols of joy and resistance. As an arts-based sustainability practitioner, I share the t-shirts I long to make or buy to soothe the trauma of the news cycle – to ensure that those martyred and lost in tragic circumstances do not fade quickly from public discourse.

The sustainable sourcing of protest t-shirts is briefly discussed, and the article concludes with an appeal to creatives and consumers, particularly in the Global South, to remain critical of what we ‘advertise’ every day with our bodies, and consider ways to disrupt sociocultural expectations, unsettle western norms, and promote different ideas and intentions for our world.