Freedom Is on the Merch
"If You See Something, Screen Print Something"
"Freedom Isn't Free (But the T-Shirts Were $10)"
"Mission Accomplished"
In the weeks after September 11, 2001, the t-shirt industry did what it always does in moments of collective emotion: it printed. Shirts appeared on sidewalk tables in Manhattan, in souvenir shops, at flea markets, in every city in America. The imagery was consistent — the Twin Towers, usually in silhouette or outline; the American flag; often an eagle; often the Statue of Liberty. "God Bless America." "United We Stand." "Never Forget." The shirts were made fast because the feeling was urgent and the screen printers already had the templates.
These were not authorized by anyone. There was no licensing authority for September 11 memorial merchandise. Some portion of the proceeds from some of these shirts went to relief funds. Much of it didn't. The commerce was not the point, or rather, the commerce was inseparable from the grief — making something, buying something, wearing something was a way of processing what had happened. The shirt was a gesture.
The specific visual language of 9/11 memorial tees draws from the same tradition as the Desert Storm shirts that preceded them by a decade: patriotic imagery, military/national symbols, bold text. But the tone is different. Desert Storm merch was triumphalist. September 11 merch was mournful. The eagle on a Desert Storm shirt is aggressive. The eagle on a 9/11 shirt is protective. The flag is not waving in victory. It's draped.
But that tone didn't last. Within weeks the grief shirts gave way to revenge shirts. Bin Laden's face in crosshairs. "You Can Run But You Can't Hide." "America's Most Wanted — Reward $5,000,000." A dying passenger's last words — "Let's Roll" — screen-printed onto a red ringer tee before the black box was recovered. Someone made a bootleg that looks like a movie poster: Bush and Bin Laden, face to face, fighter jets overhead, tanks rolling, towers burning in the background. It's the most unhinged piece of graphic design in American t-shirt history and it sold on Canal Street for eight dollars.
The hat is maybe the best artifact of the era. "These Colors Don't Run or Burn." An eagle. A flag. A trucker mesh back. It says everything the moment wanted to say, in the exact visual language the moment demanded, on the exact piece of headwear that would move the most units at a gas station in any state between the coasts.
Twenty-four years later, these shirts are historical objects. They're records of a specific moment — the first weeks, when the grief hadn't yet been converted into policy, when the unity was still real, when "God Bless America" was something people said because they meant it and not because it was a political position. And then the weeks after that, when the grief curdled into something louder, and the screen printers kept up.
This one is from that moment. Vintage condition. There's one.
Photo by U.S. Air Force / Public Domain
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