<P> Before the hippie movement Rit Dye was known as a hobby for older women . Other methods of decorating shirts include using paints, markers, fabric transfer crayons, dyes, spray paint, and many more . Some techniques that can be used include sponging, stenciling, daubing, stamping, screen printing, bleaching, and many more . As technology advances, it offers more experimentations and possibilities for designers and artists to seek for innovative techniques with their T - shirts . Rumplo, a site cofounded by Sahadeva Hammari, a startup t - shirt site that used to designed and carried over 13,000 T - shirts . Their designs used multiple futuristic techniques, such as glow - in - the - dark inks, heat - sensitive fabrics, foil printing to all - over printing . Designers like Robert Geller, a German - born American fashion designer, came out a secondary collection, Seconds featuring oversized graphic t - shirts made from supersoft jersey . Alexander Wang, on the other hand, came out with variations of t - shirts from oversized scoop necks, tanks to striped, slouchy rayon jerseys . Artist like Terence Koh, took a different approach, with t - shirts featuring an upside down portrait with a real bullet hole hand finished by him for the Soho store Opening Ceremony . </P> <P> Dye - sublimation printing is a direct - to - garment digital printing technology using full color artwork to transfer images to polyester and polymer - coated substrate based T - shirts . Dye - sublimation (also commonly referred to as all - over printing) came into widespread use in the 21st century, enabling some designs previously impossible . Printing with unlimited colors using large CMYK printers with special paper and ink is possible, unlike screen printing which requires screens for each color of the design . All - over print T - shirts have solved the problem with color fading and the vibrancy is higher than most standard printing methods, but requires synthetic fabrics for the ink to take hold . The key feature of dye - sublimated clothing is that the design is not printed on top of the garment, but permanently dyed into the threads of the shirt, ensuring that it will never fade . </P> <P> Dye - sublimation is economically viable for small - quantity printing; the unit cost is similar for short or long production runs . Screen printing has higher setup costs, requiring large numbers to be produced to be cost - effective, and the unit cost is higher . </P> <P> Solid ink is changed into a gas without passing through a liquid phase (sublimation), using heat and pressure . The design is first produced in a computer image file format such as jpg, gif, png, or any other . It is printed on a purpose - made computer printer (as of 2016 most commonly Epson or Ricoh brands) using large heat presses to vaporize the ink directly into the fabric . By mid-2012 this method had become widely used for T - shirts . </P>

Where does the term first shirt come from