Issue Date: December 28, 2003

Attitude with a tee

Want to know what's on Gen Y's mind? Read their shirts.

Plain or not, T-shirts are a way to communicate one's innermost thoughts, beliefs and tastes. So what's on the minds of today's teen tee fashionistas? Tongue-in-cheek barbs like "Boys Are Smelly" and quirky homages to 1980s hair bands like Twisted Sister. "Teens look for a tee that reflects who they are or things that are important to them," says Barbara Bylenga of youth-focused Outlaw Consulting, based in San Francisco. "Most lean to the ironic." Some tees du jour:

The way we weren't. Think vintage, decades-old rock bands, yesteryear cartoon figures like Popeye, old sports teams. And the fabric must look slightly worn, down to the grainy silk-screening. Note to guys: Buy one size smaller. Ab-solutely tight is in.

In your face. New girl-powered T-shirt lines such as David & Goliath feature stick figures with boy putdowns: "Ex-Boyfriend" shows a picture of a couple with the boy's face scribbled out. "They are hysterically funny, witty and cool -- not cutesy," says Tara McBratney, senior fashion editor of CosmoGirl magazine. But the girlie-girl look isn't completely out: Teen celebs Hilary Duff, Brittany Snow and Amanda Bynes adore 26-year-old Chrissy Azzaro's feminine My-Tees, like her soft cotton pointelle top with large mohair flowers on the shoulder.

Streamlined hip-hop. Music wannabes can tee up with Eve's low-cut shirts from her new Fetish line. And simplicity is the theme for rapper 50 Cent's brand-new G-Unit Clothing Co.

Low-tech. Hand-sewn T-shirts from Southern quilters (Project Alabama) and tees featuring vivid images taken by a low-tech Soviet-engineered camera (www.lomography.com) are top picks of Sass Brown, a professor at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology.

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Shape-note singing: The next movie-music sensation?

Beyond the story, a movie's music can inspire. Recall the comeback of old country blues with the Grammy-winning, multiplatinum album from "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" Next up: The soundtrack from the Civil War epic "Cold Mountain" features period music, too: shape-note singing, a little-known musical tradition that dates back to colonial New England churches, whose off-key congregations needed an easy way to learn hymns. How it works: Participants sound out tunes using only four "shape notes" -- fa, so, la and mi -- marked by a triangle, circle, square and diamond in hymnals. Now this a cappella method of group singing is making a comeback in cities from Berkeley to Buffalo. The soundtrack's shape-note songs were recorded at a small church in Henagar, Ala. ("Cold Mountain" stars Nicole Kidman and Jude Law even learned how to do it.) You can try it at home, says film consultant Tim Eriksen: "It's not a listener's music. It really is a singer's music."

Contributing: Vyvyan Lynn, Nancy Henderson Wurst