The tour t-shirt. No other garment embodies the magic of popular music nearly as well, with the possible exception of Robert Plant's famous blues-bib. For what could be more redolent of the glamour and spectacular excess of rock'n'roll than a thin black shirt with short sleeves, emblazoned with the name of a band and a list (usually centrally justified) of dates and venues that they intend to play during a tour? Here is a brief selection of classic t-shirt designs collected over the years. Thanks are due to Waldi Jounimen's Museum of Musical Vestments in The Hague.

1. Here we see the earliest known example of the tour t-shirt. This was recovered from a chalk pit in the front garden of Mick Jagger's Cheshire bungalow. Ironically, despite being manufactured nearly three million years before the discovery and use of iron, it is fully machine washable.

2. A typical example of 17th century tour apparel here. Note the large unwieldy ruff, which was useful for resting one's pint glass on during concerts. Sadly the Merrye Minstrels' tour was cut short after the Ratcatcher's Arms gig, when the entire band caught bubonic plague after shaking hands with a promoter.

3. This is the tour t-shirt of Private Reginald Spooner of Godalming, who died the first time he wore it (he couldn’t get it over his head and walked into a lamp-post on the way home from his local Army recruiting office).

4. A rare promotional t-shirt produced for Elvis's first posthumous tour.

5. An example of '80s chic here. Rather than issuing actual t-shirts, Cliff's management company employed a man to go around writing the tour details on people's chests. The same man was arrested two years later for tattooing the sleeve notes for Frankie Goes To Hollywood's debut album on Margi Clarke's thighs.

6. Bang up to date now with a t-shirt from Keane's last outing. It's presumably an exercise in ultra-trendy ironic soft-sell marketing.