UPFRONT AND PERSONAL.

Byline: Lewis Taylor The Register-Guard

Need to get something off your chest?

Try putting it on your T-shirt.

"Basically, everyone's just a big walking billboard," says Ricky Chavez, 20, sporting an "If You're Not Drunk or Naked What's the Point?" shirt.

OK, so the messages aren't always profound, but they are fun to read. Take a sampling from tees spotted in Eugene:

"What if Buddha Was Slim?"

"Only You Can Prevent Narcissism"

"Ivanova is God"

"Slow and Steady and always ready"

"Brush Your Teeth and Do Your Homework"

"Repent Your Sins"

Shirts with messages aren't a new phenomenon, but the words people wear are always changing. T-shirts can serve as a sort of clunky barometer of how we're feeling, which, at the moment, appears to be angry, funny, thoughtful, profane and provocative.

"Fight Crime, Buy a Gun," reads a shirt designed by Jeremy Murray, 31, of Eugene.

"When does (the message) cross the line?" wonders Murray, who also designed the "Buddha" tee. "Maybe when it becomes slanderous. Some people define art as anything that provokes emotions, and T-shirts are an art form."

Other T-shirt wearers are less serious about the fashion statements they're making.

"I'm just looking for something that amuses me, something funny," says Leif Tishendorf, 26, a University of Oregon student wearing an "I am a bomb technician. If you see me running, try to keep up" T-shirt.

Still others don't care to broadcast any messages at all. Ellie Selko, 21, of Corvallis prefers to let her mouth do the talking.

"My political views can't be boiled down and put on a T-shirt," says Selko, who opts for solid colors and simple designs.

Finding the right words

At the Willamette Street fashion shop Deluxe, owner Dagua Webb is always on the lookout for used and new T-shirts with just the right sensibility.

"The ones I like are usually pretty subtle and cryptic," Webb says. "I look for the ones that have a little more intrigue" - though she did sell out of a shirt with an expletive aimed at President Bush.

Webb has had some success selling her own tees, which carry her store's logo paired with animal clip art. Other popular shirts include: "Love With Michael Jackson," "If Only You Were Mick" and a kitschy Southeast Asian-style travel print with the words "Air Flight" across the front. Shirts at her shop sell for $6 to $24.

Almost as crucial as the message though, is the material.

"The feel of a shirt is really important," says Mary Kolego, store manager of the Buffalo Exchange thrift store on Fifth Avenue.

"Sometimes, if the feel of it is just right, (a used shirt) is better than a new shirt."

Among the shirts on the racks at the Buffalo Exchange were a red-on-black "I am the Evil Twin" shirt selling for $10.50, a "Drugs, We've Lost the War ... Let's Party" tee selling for $9.50 and a Cherry Poppin' Daddies concert tee signed by lead singer Steve Perry selling for $12.50.

Perry, himself a casual T-shirt collector, prefers concert tees from the 1970s and cheesy shirts from foreign tourist destinations - the cheaper the better.

"The cheap ones are softer," says Perry, who recently picked up a 1977 Led Zeppelin concert shirt from the thrift store Eugene Jeans for about $30. "When they get washed, they have this veneer that I just look for."

Tim Long, owner of Eugene Jeans, stocks a variety of different concert tees, shirts with jokes on them and vintage shirts in faded tones that go for about $6 to $8. A well-worn "Animal House" T-shirt from 1978 hangs on one wall of the store above a fitting room.

"It's priceless," says Long. "It's not for sale."

Most local T-shirt sellers listed their ceiling price for tees at $15 or $20, but at women's boutiques such as Melange in the Fifth Street Public Market, designer labels sell for $30 to $60.

The store carries a line of rhinestone-encrusted shirts called And Cake that feature short words and phrases, but more popular is a line of solid cotton shirts by Michael Stars that come in "absinthe" green and other vibrant colors.

"It's hard to explain until you buy one," says sales associate Ashley Malcolm, summing up the appeal of the spendy tees. "They're well made ... I've never ruined one (in the wash)."

The shirts are so popular that the store has a list of customers it calls when new ones arrive.

Shock value

At Web site VintageVantage .com, the price for vintage concert tees can go much higher. A 1978 Rolling Stones shirt advertised as "faded to vintage perfection" was selling for $7,800.

The site also offers $18 shirts that are new but made to look old. They carry catchy slogans such as "Mini Van ... Mega Fun" and "Donde Estan Mis Pantalones" (Where are my pants?).

Vintage Vantage recently found itself embroiled in a T-shirt controversy after the clothing retailer Urban Outfitters picked up one of its designs. The tee, which bore the slogan "Voting is for Old People," drew outrage from critics who charged that it encouraged voter apathy. Urban Outfitters pulled the shirt from shelves in early April.

Young people wearing shirts that make older people uncomfortable is nothing new, but recent debates around T-shirt content recall the political correctness movement of the 1980s.

The governor of West Virginia demanded last month that Abercrombie & Fitch stop selling a shirt with the slogan "In West Virginia it's All Relative."

At the same time, there's no denying that some T-shirts seem calculated to shock rather than amuse or enlighten.

The Web site TShirtHell.com offers a line of shirts for toddlers with such slogans such as "Daddy Drinks Because I Cry," "They Shake Me" and "I (Soiled) My Pants and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt." The site also offers tees that make light of rape, dwarfs and abortion.

Susan Truax, owner of the custom silk-screening company Printwear of Oregon, wonders how far T-shirt messages will go. She points to a controversial shirt produced two years ago by Abercrombie & Fitch. The shirt, which was quickly discontinued, featured an image of two Asian laundry workers and the slogan "Two Wongs Can Make it White."

"There is a lot of stuff out there that is, to me, over the line (but) just considered mainstream now," Truax says. "We see much more bad taste out there in printed T-shirts."

Murray, the Eugene T-shirt designer, faced his own flap over a shirt he created with the image of a topless woman and an unprintable slogan. When creating a new shirt, he says, he follows his own T-shirt ideals rather than imagining how his shirts will be perceived by others.

"I usually just do stuff, whatever makes me laugh," he says. "And a lot of times what makes me laugh, a lot of people don't like."

T-SHIRT HISTORY

The origin is uncertain, but theories abound, most with a nautical theme:

Tea: Shirts worn by 17th century Maryland longshoremen when they unloaded tea from ships.

Hairy armpits: Shirt originated with British sailors who were ordered to sew short sleeves on their sleeveless undershirts to hide their hairy armpits.

Military: U.S. Navy adopted white tees in the early 1900s and Sears began selling shirts in the late 1930s, offering an alternative to the popular sleeveless white undershirt. The Navy, Marine Corps and Army all ordered them for servicemen in World War II, and thus the T-shirt evolved from underwear to outerwear.

- Smithsonian Magazine

Seen at Eugene T-shirt shops:

My Two Favorite Teams are Oregon and Whoever is Playing Washington * Have a Spacey Day * I Dance Naked in Front of my Web Cam * I'll Swashbuckle Any Land Lubber me See, Ye Scurvy Dogs * What Happens In Vegas, Stays in Vegas * Milk Sucks, Got Beer? * I Fought the Lawn and the Lawn Won * 50 Isn't Old if You're a Tree * My Take Home Pay Won't Even Take Me Home * Surf Scandinavia * Who Wants to Marry a Hundredaire? * Talk Nerdy to me * What Would Jesus Do (for a Klondike Bar?) *

I Bring Nothing to the Table

And remember these from the past?

Eat Beans - America Needs the Gas * Nuclear Power: Rotten to the Core * A Woman's Place is in the House (and in the Senate) * Where's the Beef? * Die Yuppie Scum * I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up * I'm With Stupid * Impeach Nixon * Liberate Marijuana * A Woman Needs a Man Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle