Resumo: The object of analysis refers to the use of T-shirts by tourists associated with consumption in the form of souvenirs and clothing, with the production of meaning by the imaginary related to tourist experiences while traveling. We can find T-shirts in all segments of tourism as souvenirs and clothing. The article analyzes the presence of T-shirts from their origins until it reaches the tourist market. Thus, it aims to explain the use and consumption of T-shirts by tourists in leisure and consumption relations through theories and concepts applied to the investigated reality. The T-shirt, despite being little investigated, has an impacting use in the tourist market. The phenomenological method serves as a path because it helps to transform objects, facts, and events into phenomena, susceptible to scientific explanation, without the need to formulate hypotheses. The study of semiotics, a field of knowledge suitable for the explanation of images and symbols, leads to the understanding of the use of T-shirts that becomes a tourism icon, presenting the presence of the souvenir object in clothing. It highlights basic concepts of the image construction process of T-shirts in tourist destinations with a literature review by several authors. Besides the theoretical study, a form is applied through the Google Forms platform, complemented with netnographic research. The analysis of the research data explains and proves the use and consumption of souvenirs by tourists in tourist places. It is concluded that there is a numerical growth in the use of T-shirts in addition to the profit achieved by companies through the sale of the product. The use of the T-shirt is also related to the personality and behavior of tourists, so that it identifies them, as well as social diversities and lifestyles, confirming it as a souvenir and clothing. The consumption of T-shirts permeates tourists, citizens, and consumers, thus being a phenomenon explainable by science.
