It’s not as though I don’t have enough t-shirts already. This summer alone I bought one with Hudson’s Bay stripes, one with a retro book cover of The Wizard of Oz, one with abstracted representations of all of the Muppets, and one with a close-up, black and white image of John Galliano, part of my ongoing, back-and-forth debate over whether I’ve forgiven the disgraced designer yet. That’s not to mention the two graphic tees I got from Zara–one white with bright pink orchids, the other black with palm leaves, parrots, and skulls. (In a cartoon, Angel Max would wear the white shirt and whisper in my ear I should work hard and go to bed early. Devil Max would encourage me to stay up all night watching sitcoms on my laptop, adding, “Girl, those sour cream and onion chips won’t eat themselves!”

In addition to t-shirts representing my eccentric obsessions, I also enjoy a nice plain tee in a solid, soothing colour. Recently researchers at Nottingham Trent University, presumably because they didn’t have anything better to do, discovered women were 12 per cent more likely to be sexually attracted to a man in a white t-shirt. They tested how women responded to t-shirts printed with the letter T, emphasizing the shoulders, and then one with an upside down T, emphasizing the gut. As an article about the study states, “The results suggest shifting the focus to a man’s stomach reduces his desirability.” Science, people.

Even though I’m as gay as a pink orchid t-shirt, a fact I’m certain you discerned from this post’s first paragraph, I was still intrigued by this study. Is it possible the white shirt wearers of the Sexy Hall of Fame (Marlon Branda, James Dean, the cast of the original ‘90210′) were less sexy than previously believed? Was Fruit of the Loom cotton the source of all their eroticism?

I bought some plain, white t-shirts from Old Navy and wore one on a date. He cooked Chinese and I said, the spicier, the better. We sat out on his condo’s balcony (a reason not to date older men–apartment envy) and began to eat the spicy, red Szechwan dish he’d prepared.

“I like your shirt,” he said. “Clean, simple. You look good.”

Not five minutes later, I dropped a piece of onion and it bounced down my shirt, leaving at least three bright red stains down the front. Those are not the kinds of stains I want on a first date.

My point is, I have enough t-shirts… but I could always have more. This summer I had hoped to get a shirt with one of those highly exposed, dreamy Californian, Sofia Coppola-like images of skies or beaches or the Los Angeles Freeway. It was a trend I saw all over, but I could never find the perfect one at a store. Part of the problem was a lot of those shirts had pictures of women in bikinis on them, their thong-hugged bottoms pushed towards the viewer. Not really my scene.

If I’m going to wear a t-shirt with a beautiful woman on it, it’s not going to be a beach bunny or an unauthorized, illegal likeness of Rihanna. Much more up my alley is this t-shirt from Forever 21 that pays tribute to Richard Avedon’s 1955 photograph ‘Dovima with Elephants’. The image of a severe model posing with pachyderms is striking on its own, but it’s made better when you know a bit of background.

Nineteen-forty-seven was a watershed year for fashion. The Second World War may have ended in 1945, but the sartorial victory occurred two years later when Christian Dior introduced his New Look–wasp-waisted and full-skirted, the unabashedly feminine, luxurious silhouette announced an end to austerity, brought French couture roaring back, and became the prevalent style of the next decade. (It’s old-fashioned fussiness also brought a grumbling Coco Chanel out of retirement to reintroduce her boyish alternative.)

Also in 1947, the American photographer Richard Avedon began shooting fashion models in Paris for Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. Eschewing the stuffy studio, he took his girls out into the streets, encouraging them to engage with city life like the protagonists of their own movies. They played with dogs. They jumped over puddles. As Owen Edwards wrote, “In his Parisian pictures from the late 1940s and ’50s, the joie de vivre is the expression of a young man’s delight at being where he was, doing what he was doing.”

Dovima, for whom the term ‘super model’ was coined, was one of his favourite models. She was born Dorothy Virginia Margaret Juba in Queens, New York, and came up with the name ‘Dovima’ by combining her first three given names. An editor when meeting a friend at the building that housed the Vogue offices discovered her. (Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire fictionalized Dovima and Avedon in the film ‘Funny Face,’ in which the model has a cameo.) Avedon described her as “the last of the great elegant, aristocratic beauties…the most remarkable and unconventional beauty of her time”.

Together, the pair travelled to Egypt, with Dovima insisting on bringing a suitcase full of comic books. While there it became clear Dovima didn’t know Egypt was within Africa, unfortunately during an interview. When it was explained to her that Egypt was part of Africa she retorted swiftly, “I should have charged double rate!”

But they didn’t go anywhere more exotic than a Parisian circus for ‘Dovima with Elephants.’ The gown she wears is noteworthy as the first evening dress Dior’s young assistant Yves Saint Laurent designed for the label. In the years to come, Saint Laurent would usher in pantsuits with his ‘Le Smoking’ while Avedon returned to the studio to better capture the idiosyncratic faces and personalities of celebrities. In 1962 Dovima quit modeling, noting, ”I didn’t want to wait until the camera turned cruel.”

Although now recognized as an iconic fashion photograph, Avedon himself was lukewarm about the picture and didn’t include it in his book, An Autobiography. A perfectionist, he thought the gown’s sash fell wrong. “It should have echoed the outside leg of the elephant to Dovima’s right,” he complained. I don’t know about that. What I do know is I covet any piece of clothing that pays tribute to four fantastic figures of fashion history, all on a simple t-shirt. 

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Max Mosher writes about style for Toronto Standard. You can follow him on Twitter at @max_mosher_. 

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