How to read a vintage tag

What the tag inside a vintage band shirt can and can't tell you about when it was made, from the maker's name to the care label and the stitching.

Updated 12 October 2026

The tag inside the neck tells you about the blank shirt, not the print on it. A blank can sit in a warehouse for years before it is printed, and a later print can land on an old blank. So a tag gives you a likely range of years, never a single one. Read it together with the stitching and the print.

Our vintage tag dater does this reading for you: photograph the tag and the stitching and it gives a likely range, with the reason and the source for each sign.

Start with the maker

The maker's name is the strongest sign on most tags. These are the makers the tag dater knows, with what its sources say.

Screen Stars. Fruit of the Loom named its printable blanks Screen Stars in 1980. The "Screen Stars Best" tag came later, from about 1986. (Defunkd timeline)
Hanes. Hanes introduced the Beefy-T in 1975. Hanes has made T-shirts for decades, so the name alone does not date a shirt; the rest of the tag does. (PPAI)
Anvil. The Anvil name dates from 1976, and Gildan bought Anvil in 2012. (Defunkd, Gildan)
Gildan. Gildan was founded in 1984. (Wikipedia)
Winterland. Winterland Productions made licensed band shirts from 1974 until around 2011. (Wikipedia, Defunkd)
Giant. Giant tags appear on licensed band shirts from 1991 to 2013. (Defunkd)
Brockum. Brockum shirts were made from the 1970s to the late 1990s (V&A), but one collector reference says the early ones carried a plain Made in Canada tag and the Brockum tag itself starts in 1988. The tag dater leaves Brockum out until a second source agrees. (Defunkd)
Fruit of the Loom. The name has been on shirts for a very long time, so it does not date a shirt on its own.

Read the care label

In the US, the FTC's Care Labeling Rule has required a permanent care label since 1972. A label with written care instructions fits any year from then on. A label with symbols and no words could only be used in the US from 1 July 1997, so a symbols-only label points to 1997 or later. (FTC, Federal Register notice)

Look up the RN number

An RN number stands in for the company's name on the label. It tells you who made or sold the shirt, not when. You can look it up in the FTC's RN database, and the rules for using it are in 16 CFR Part 303.

Check the stitching

Turn up a sleeve or the hem. One line of thread is single stitch; two parallel lines is double stitch. Single stitch is usually a sign of a shirt made before the late 1990s. Some later shirts and reprints use it too, so it supports a date rather than proving one. Double stitch turns up on shirts as early as the 1970s, so it does not set an earliest year. (ThriftCon, Defunkd)

Don't lean on the country

It is tempting to read Made in USA as old and anything else as new. The sources don't support that. Brockum's early shirts carried Made in Canada tags, and Gildan was making shirts in Montreal from 1984. Only some makers, such as Giant, moved production abroad in the mid 1990s.

Read the print as well

A copyright year on the print means it was printed that year or later. Tour dates on the back set the earliest year too. Reprints copy both, so treat them as the earliest a shirt could be, not proof that it is that old. If the tag and the print disagree, you may be holding an old print on a later blank, or a later print on an old one. Our guide to telling an unofficial shirt goes further.

Put it together

No single sign settles it. A Screen Stars Best tag with a written care label and single stitching points to the late 1980s or early 1990s; add a symbols-only care label and the signs disagree, which is worth knowing too. The tag dater weighs them for you and shows its working.

Once you know roughly when it was made, the vintage fit converter tells you which modern size it fits like.

Sources

Every source below is the one the tag dater uses, rechecked on 11 October 2026.

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