Meet the collector with 3,000 vintage T-shirts who's keeping Philly's past alive
History isn't just found in museums or books. For one Philadelphia man, he's keeping the past alive through thousands of graphic T-shirts.
"Everybody wears a T-shirt," 41-year-old Perry Shall said.
But not everybody has more than 3,000 vintage tees that are neatly stacked on countless shelves in what he calls his "T-shirt library" inside his East Germantown home.
"Anything you can believe; they made a T-shirt out of," Shall said while going through stacks of his shirts. "Kirstie Alley from Star Trek, a Listerine shirt, this is a scratch-and-sniff shirt. This actually still smells."
Each one is over 20 years old. He uses a T-shirt folding board on a custom-built table to keep his collection organized.
"I feel like I work at the GAP every time I do this," Shall said. "They're walking billboards. You're expressing your feelings by walking down the street."
About a thousand shirts are dedicated just to Philadelphia, including institutions, well-known icons and local food.
"I got a CHOP shirt," Shall said. "A Temple University shirt from the 1940s. A Joe Frazier shirt, a Teddy Pendergrass shirt. We have Rita's Water Ice and Philadelphia, the big pretzel."
Shall's collection is almost like a wearable scrapbook that started after finding his dad's old T-shirts when he was just 10-years old growing up in northeast Philly.
"All this stuff that kind of helped shape me musically, or locally or whatever, in T-shirt form," Shall said.
"It's an endless amount of places that I get them," Shall said. "I could go to thrift stores, flea markets, estate sales. I don't pay a lot for these shirts. Some of these shirts sell for hundreds of dollars, some over $1,000 for one shirt."
It's grown into even inspiring his work as a graphic designer, illustrator and Grammy-nominated art director.
"I've done art for everyone, from Green Day, Questlove, Skrilla, The Black Keys," Shall said.
His passion for vintage shirts has led to his own digital show called T-Time, where he interviews others about their favorite T-shirts. One of his most memorable interviews was with comedian and actor Gilbert Gottfried.
"Sometimes the T-shirt tells you a lot more about a person than you expect," Shall said. "Gilbert held on to everything he owned. So, he had every shirt from every show, every movie."
And Shall is only getting started. He plans to continue collecting vintage T-shirts and sharing the history with others.
"The ultimate goal is I want to create a Philadelphia archive, museum," Shall said. "I want the whole museum to be a T-shirt museum. I want it to have the history of the T-shirt, it could talk about screen printing. The main idea is that I think there's more of a history and interest behind these shirts that a lot of people really understand."
