Gildan Redefines Plus-Size for T-Shirts

By Rebekah Pippin

It wasn’t quite large enough to be seen from space, but the enormous T-shirt created by Gildan must have startled pilots of low-flying aircraft passing over Nashville’s Centennial Park on Saturday morning.

In fact, this super-plus-size item was certified officially by a representative from Guinness World Records as the largest T-shirt ever made. Emblazoned with logos for Gildan along with CMA and its Keep the Music Playing charity to support music education, it measures 281.3 feet long and 180.9 feet wide, tipping the scales at nearly two tons. The fabric was shipped from Honduras to Utah, where the pieces were sewed together with more than 1.4 million stitches. Finished after six weeks, it was loaded onto a flatbed truck in time to be unrolled by a crew of 90 during CMA Music Festival.

With the record confirmed onstage at the Saturday night LP Field concerts, work will soon begin to transform it into 12,000 human-sized shirts, all of which will be donated to Metro Nashville Schools through Keep the Music Playing. Danny Gokey participated in both the Centennial Park and LP Field events.

“I thought it would be big, but I didn’t think it would be that big,” insisted Connie McCain, 54, of Smyrna, Tenn., attending her first CMA Music Fest. “You just don’t expect to see something like that, but it’s great that Gildan is given the shirts to the children of Nashville.”