Tales of a T-shirt

Are your T-shirts some of the least valuable pieces of clothing in your wardrobe? Or are they very important to you? Have you ever wondered about the origin of your T-shirts, how they were made, where, or by whom? Join us on a journey to explore the places where the cotton for T-shirts was grown. We’ll introduce you to the people who turned the natural fiber into fabric, and you’ll discover what this means to you. Here, we’ll follow the journey of the T-shirt that was specifically produced for this project. Together we can discover what different stories a T-shirt can tell. Enjoy your travels!

Meet the makers

Tales of a T-shirt takes you on a journey with 400 custom made T-shirts, produced in India by Raddis Cotton. The T-shirts were co-designed by students from Zadkine College (Rotterdam, Netherlands) and the Erode College of Arts and Sciences (ECAS) in Erode, India. Four students have played a key role in shaping the design: Alisetty and Larissa from Zadkine, and Jaswantee and Rasigapriya drom ECAS. The two Dutch students had the opportunity to visit India, and together with their Indian counterpart they visited the factories where the T-shirts were made.

A limited run of 400 T-shirts were produced, and they are now being worn, mainly, by students of the two colleges involved in the project. Through wearing the T-shirts, the students have been encouraged to reflect on their value. They share their thoughts about cotton, their favorite clothing, how clothing affects their identity and what freedom means to them in relation to dress. This website captures the ongoing journey, step by step. Texts, photographs and videos provide you with a look behind the scenes, revealing how the T-shirt came about, and what its journey can tell us.

Why this website?

This website is for anyone who is interested in the journey our clothes take – from design, through production to wearing. It is especially aimed at students who are preparing for a career in the garment industry, a fast growing sector in the global economy, with an annual turnover of billions of euros. The industry provides income to many homes, and clothes to many bodies, but it also faces major challenges. With significant environmental and societal impacts, huge volumes of clothes are produced, only to be worn for a short time and then be quickly discarded.

Rather than relying on numbers and statistics, this e-book shares how small groups of students from vocational training programmes in fashion and design in the Netherlands and India engaged with challenges in the clothing industry. In the Netherlands – a small, wealthy country in northern Europe – garments are designed and purchased. Despite a rich textile-making history, few garments are still produced in the Netherlands. In India, an emerging economy in South Asia, a significant share of the world’s garments are not only produced but also designed and worn. The website invites you to learn from and think with students who live in countries located at different but connected ends of the global garment production chain.

What’s on this website?

Tales of a T-shirt reveals the processes involved in the design, making and wearing of a cotton T-shirt. To achieve this the project partners collaborated to track every step – from the cultivation of cotton seeds to the distribution and customization of the final product. Meeting farmers, garment workers, and wearers along the way, they documented the real-life questions and challenges each group faced. This approach reveals how designers, producers and wearers are all interconnected, although their voices are rarely brought together. By doing so, the website allows you to make emotional connections across different elements of the garment production chain, which normally remain separate.

The website includes videoclips. These were made with and by students from the Netherlands and India who participated in the project. All the videos come with English subtitles. The photos on this website are mostly taken by team members; all photos are made during the project.

Localizing Global Garment Biographies