But where does the t-shirt actually come from? History says that the first t-shirt was produced in 1904 after a manufacturer of men's underwear suits decided to split the underwear suit in two. The word t-shirt, on the other hand, was only used a few decades later by the author F. Scott Fitzgerald, for the first time in his debut novel "This side of Paradise" in 1920. Until then, the t-shirt was called an undershirt, and the cool thing was that even though it had no buttons, it was quick to put on. Marlon Brando and of course "Rebel without a cause" star James Dean helped make the t-shirt cool and commonplace in the 50s.