Marseille (AFP)

Worker clothing that became a symbol of free women in the "Roaring Twenties" then adopted by stars like Freddy Mercury, the tank top, a small sleeveless cotton top, is exhibited in Marseille, where it is still made on historic machines.

Originally, this "undergarment" was a skin knit formed from a single piece of tubular cotton, absorbing sweat well thanks to its knitted mesh, reminds AFP Colline Zellal, associate curator of the exhibition "Model clothes" organized until December 6 at the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations (Mucem) around five "iconic" clothes that have crossed eras and fashions.

The blue of work, the kilt, the espadrille, the jogging - it also underwear at the origin before conquering the sportsmen of the English universities of Cambridge and Oxford then to become the uniform of the culture hip hop-- rub shoulders with the tank top either with original pieces by creators, or through their representations in popular culture (music, comics, cinema, posters, video games).

Particularly suitable for physical work, from factories to major seaports like that of Marseille, the tank top takes its name from "docking", the action of unloading goods at the quay, explains Isabelle Crampes, exhibition curator, engaged in a approach to supporting textile know-how around the world.

On a large canvas by the painter Antoine Serra (1908-1995), displayed at the Mucem, a docker dressed in a white tank top demonstrated in Marseille against the Indochina war.

In the first half of the 20th century, the tank top embodied a certain image - sometimes very stereotypical - of virility and the proletarian. Far from Marseille, it is the American actor Marlon Brando who wears it torn in "A streetcar named desire" (1951) for his role of Stanley Kowalski, emblem of "brutal virility".

But the tank top will also serve as "standard for a new femininity" in the "Roaring Twenties (1920-1930), recalls Isabelle Crampes. The" boys ", these women with short cut hair claiming their independence," begin to wear it even without a bra, which is a great freedom for a time when we were still wearing corsets, "she said.

The exhibition shows prints by photographer Jacques-Henri Lartigues immortalizing his muse, the model of Romanian origin Renée Perle, in a tank top and elegant white pants on the French Riviera.

Later, Freddy Mercury, singer of the group Queen, made it one of her favorite clothes. Worn in both feminine and masculine fashion, this little top, sometimes also nicknamed marcel, is today a "basic" wardrobe.

- "Made in Marseille" -

A Marseilles family business, Sugar, continues to manufacture it with knitting looms from the 1950s. The meeting of the Tokatlian siblings - Jean-Richard, Anne-Marie and Rosemonde, children of a tailor and a leather worker-- with the tank top is done at random from a stroll in a Marseilles street in 1980.

"My brother found a white cotton tank top at a wholesaler. He brought it to me and said + do it yourself, do something with it +. I wore it to a dyer and suddenly in the colors, the blues, the greens, the roses, it was magnificent! "recalls Anne-Marie Tissot (née Tokatlian), co-founder of Sugar.

The brand exhibits at the ready-to-wear show in Paris and "suddenly the crowd, we have the whole world on the stand for the tank top. Joseph in London (famous ready-to-wear store), stores in New York , it was incredible, "she remembers.

Today, in the workshop of the La Rose district, the looms bought from the old equipment manufacturers of the port continue their delicate circular ballet, with their hundreds of needles, their carousel of spools of cotton thread which knit the famous tube of cotton in Richelieu knit, under the watchful eye of Pierre Parisi.

"When you are dealing with such old, historic machines, you have to pamper them," explains AFP, this technical operator who is the guardian of unique know-how.

With around twenty employees, Sugar manufactures artisanally, in collaboration with a dyer based in France and cotton grown in Europe, hundreds of tank tops per month with the desire to make "sustainable fashion".

With this "made in France, we are a bit the last of the Mohicans" when so many textile factories have been relocated to Asia and elsewhere, smiles Anne-Marie.

© 2020 AFP