Shigesato Itoi（HOBO NICHI ITOI SHINBUN） T-shirts are fashionable. Of course they are. They're fashionable, and they are a standard. Once they were just underwear - and it isn't all that long ago that they first 'came out' into the light of day. When you think about it, to have grown into what they are now in that short time, that's pretty good going. But don't you think there's still a whole lot more power there lying latent, waiting to be unleashed? They say that the world's oldest jeans that were discovered in the ruins of a goldmine in California are worth more than all the gold that was mined there. There is yet to be T-shirt as legendary as that. That ripped up old T-shirt with the Queen's face on it that the Sex Pistols wore comes close maybe? The Hard Rock Cafe draws thousands of fans with Jimi Hendrix's and Keith Richards' guitars on display. A t-shirt with some special value in a permanent collection - why not? If 100 lithographs can be put on show in an art museum, it would be no great surprise that out of a 1000 T-shirts, a few of them became our heirlooms. There are some kinds of sneakers that people will steal off your feet. Haven't heard of that happening with a T-shirt. TV, radio, newspapers, the internet, free-papers handed out on the street - all of those are forms of media. But isn't a T-shirt actually one of the best forms of media there is? For each generation there is a poster that symbolizes the era. A record jacket, a model, a song, a movie. I want to see a T-shirt that is remembered like that. What makes a really great T-shirt? What makes a T-shirt that people really want? What makes a strong T-shirt? A fascinating T-shirt? A sexy T-shirt? Which is Number One in the T-shirt world? We have put together a Colosseum, to shine a super-bright spotlight on that monster of potential, the humble T-shirt. Let the 2nd T-1 World Cup begin!