People Have Long Worn the American Flag. What It Means Has Evolved. — WSJ

By Sam Schube and Lane Florsheim

Holidays like Memorial Day and the Fourth of July have long cemented the American flag's associations with summertime. But this year — with a World Cup on North American soil and the 250th birthday of the United Stares — Old Glory is getting an even bigger spotlight.

Plenty of people will be flying a standard 3×5 foot flag outside their home. Countless others, though, will be wearing the flag — on T-shirts and hoodies, on cotton sweaters and luxe logowear, even on the odd pair of novelty overalls. Lately, some of the most prominent instances of wearing the flag have been in the nation's capital. FBI director Kash Patel and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have both worn flag-printed socks. At the UFC cage match held on the White House lawn last month, the fighting league's Octagon girls wore sequined minidresses featuring stars and stripes.

For almost as long as it has been a physical emblem of the nation, the flag has also featured in fashion statements by figures ranging from government officials to counterculture protesters to luxury designers at home and abroad. That's thanks in part to its durability and versatility as a symbol said Tommy Hilfiger, whose namesake brand has long used the American flag and its colors in its designs. "In fashion, it can communicate pride and identity, but it also leaves room for personal interpretation," Hilfiger said. "That's what makes it powerful — people can connect to it in their own way."

Homemade Flag Fashion

Flag fashion predates commercially manufactured clothing, said Elizabeth Way, a curator at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, which has a homemade dress made for a patriotic pageant from the late 19th century in its collection. Flag attire from that time and earlier communicated something different than apparel made after the advance of large-scale clothing manufacturing, she explained.

Before the era of mass production, Way said, making your own flag clothing "would have been more about individual engagement with ideas of patriotism." By the early 20th century, manufacturing innovations had helped to make the flag a more widespread symbol. As a result, wearing it became "less of a specific political message and more about engaging in a larger culture," Way added. The commercialization of flag clothing, of course, has not stopped politically turbulent times from giving it new meaning.

While federal code states that the flag should never be used as apparel, that rule is unenforceable. "Freedom of speech trumps the flag code," said Scot M. Guenter, professor emeritus of American studies at San Jose State University and longtime vexillologist, or flag scholar.

From Counter Culture to American Optimism

In the 1960s, Guenter explained, the flag was embedded into the "international landscape of symbols" associated with hippies and antiwar activists. One notable example: The flag shirt that the activist Abbie Hoffman was wearing when he was arrested while trying to disrupt a meeting of the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1968.

Years later, as wartime fervor was overtaken by a new era of American optimism in the 1980s, ascendant designers like Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren tapped into that spirit by using the flag as a motif in their brands. A simple sweater with a flag across the chest that Lauren introduced in 1989 has since regularly appeared in his company's collections, finding fans across generations, including many Gen Zers who now post about it on TikTok. This year, Lauren's flag sweater was featured on a new stamp that the U.S. Postal Service issued in collaboration with the designer.

In Malls Nationwide

While Lauren's brand made wearing the flag aspirational, others like Old Navy made flag fashion more accessible. The mall brand has sold flag T-shirts each year since its founding in 1994. "As soon as we start summer, our number one priority is that flag tee," said Sarah Holme, the company's head of design. "It's bigger than the brand at this point." An Old Navy spokeswoman said that roughly a million flag T-shirts are now sold annually, with purchases peaking around Memorial Day.

The year 1994 was also when the U.S. men's soccer team, playing in the first World Cup held on American soil, sported jerseys featuring a cascade of white stars against a backdrop the color and texture of washed denim — a motif that somehow made the flag seem even more American. "Unapologetically different" was how Inigo Turner, design director at Adidas Football, described the jerseys, which the brand reissued for this year's World Cup.

Nicolas Angione, whose collection of vintage menswear includes several Ralph Lauren flag sweaters, said their appeal is less patriotic than it is personal. The sweaters remind Angione, who owns a dog training business in Norwalk, Conn., of past summer vacations on Cape Cod and of his father, another Ralph Lauren collector. For the country's semiquincentennial, Angione is planning to return to the Cape — and to bring his flag sweaters. "The backdrop is perfect for content," he said.

The way Angione associates flag apparel with his own experiences reflects an observation made by Guenter, the vexillologist: That wearing the American flag is an expression of American individualism. "The general idea with people with flag clothes tends to be, I have the right idea of what the flag is, so I can wear it the way I want."