WOMEN AND WORKWEAR: AN ESSENTIAL SYLLABUS

The rise and fall of the office Working Girl was swift, cataleptic; shoulder pads and permed hair became démodé past 1995, and, in its absence, offices started to adopt elements of a tried-and-true style formula: traditional workwear. Functional, heavy-duty, without pretense — workwear has become one of the few truly timeless wardrobe styles in our present consciousness, informed by its proletarian durability. These are your Carhartt overalls, purpose-built and grease-stained; Timberland boots; 40-year-old carpenter’s jeans, nary a rip, from brands that don’t exist anymore. Given the unsexiness of the whole thing, it’s easy for even the most committed fashion acolytes to overlook the style’s immense influence on how (and why) we dress, now — and it’s also easy to consider workwear only through the crucible of masculinity. 

Don’t get it twisted: while workwear can also refer to general office wear — think fitted blazers, pencil skirts — workwear also refers to blue-collar work garments. This unofficial syllabus covers the brands, moments, designers, and ideas in women’s traditional workwear that have long been omitted from the conversation. While it’s not fully comprehensive, it is a good place to start if you want to look like you know how to change a tire.

001 | THE BIRTH OF WORK*

*Workwear, that is. 1853 and 1889 saw the birth of Levi’s and Carhartt, respectively — brands that have since become synonymous with the spirit of American blue-collar dress. In San Francisco, Levi Strauss began selling bolts of denim as dry goods, then got the idea for denim-as-pants; in Detroit, Hamilton Carhartt began cutting work jackets and boiler suits, all fitted for Industrial Revolution-era factories, farms, and construction lots. Permanence was an attractive impulse; a garment could be patched with a swath of denim or re-affixed with a rivet. While trad-mod workwear was invented with male laborers in mind, women (still outfitted in bustles, stays, petticoats) dreamed of denim, going so far as to use it for curtain-making.

002 | COWGIRL COUTURE

Levi’s synonymousness with the steezy, dirt-under-the-fingernails image of the American cowboy brought cowgirls into the forefront. Jeans for women (!!!) became comfortable and common on California dude ranches, and proffered the first taste of femme utilitarianism. In 1934, Levi’s launched a line of jeans entitled “Lady Levi’s,” and the style slowly seeped out from the West and into the American heartland. A pair from that same year — the 501 Cinch Buckle Back Jeans — currently retail for no less than $9,000, FYI. 

003 | POST-WAR PANTS MAXXING

World War II meant women needed clothing for factory-contra-military function. That meant: Carharttian boiler suits, twill fabrications, denim jumpsuits, loose-fitting cotton blouses, and sunshiny turbans to keep pin curls off the face. But few of those textures were kept in rotation post-war, barring day jeans and the occasional evening jumpsuit. In the West, the 1950s were marked by an overcorrection from the somewhat-androgynous preceding decade; office dress codes stressed cinched waists, short evening gloves, and shirt-dressing. This marks the vanishing point for women’s utilitarian workwear — it wouldn’t make a prominent re-emergence until the late 1980s (more on that later).

004 | WORKWEAR AS PROTEST

Shortly past the crest of the Civil Rights Era, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) — a youth-led student bloc protesting civic, political, and cultural segregation — adopted then-solely-utilitarian overalls as a group uniform. The choice, partially inspired by the image of Jim Crowian sharecroppers, also tendered a veil of protection for female organizers. In The Journal of Southern History, Tanisha Ford suggests that overalls were an androgynous equalizer across organizing lines — and helped many jailed women evade sexual assault by the police. But the cross-political ramifications of overall-as-symbol remain contentious. On the SNCC’s iconoclastic overalls, late Civil Rights activist and Congressman John Lewis quipped in 1963: “We have adopted a uniform which we wear everywhere in a self-righteous way. Do we really wear it to identify with the working class, or is it now a status symbol?”

005 | WOMEN IN THE OFFICE

Despite the underpinnings of the Sexual Revolution, women’s workwear (even in blue-collar settings, such as hospitals or laboratories) remained fitted and femme’d. While denim and pants became more commonplace, especially for young people on college campuses, they were altogether absent from the office. 1970s office dress codes were somewhat of a conservative turnabout from the midcentury cigarette pant — and perhaps an unconscious impulse against slackening social mores outside of the office.

006 | CARHARTT REVOLUTION

The late ‘80s saw somewhat of a workwear revolution that blurred the gender line, thanks to two prospering subcultures: skating and hip-hop. Brands like Carhartt, Dickies, and Life’s A Beach were affordable and accessible, especially in New York, where they could easily be acquired at surplus shops. Workwear’s endurability was also of note — for skater’s constant grinds and grazes and for many rappers’ transport of equipment on and off the subway. As women entered these scenes, they borrowed the textures of their male counterparts and made them their own; through this act, the diffusion line Carhartt for Women was established in the mid-90s, and more women in blue-collar roles saw a unisex approach to occupational workwear emerge. 

007 | MAINSTREAM UTILITY

By the late ‘90s and into the 2000s, workwear was now something so commonplace it bordered on mundanity — from the now-infamous Stüssy x Carhartt x Tommy Boy Records jacket to celeb-approved Timbs to the thundering of cargo. Sometimes it was done with vocational intention — a woman spotted in, say, cargo pants and a heavy duck-fabric jacket wouldn’t be out of the ordinary — but workwear textures were also, occasionally, an exercise in glamour. The S/S 2011 season in particular saw designers like Isabel Marant, Olivier Theyskens, and Paul Smith uniquely embrace leather, denim, and structural garment-making as a feminine practice. 

008 | WORK/STREET/WORK

Trend lifecycle theory proves right once again: something controversial becomes accepted and then becomes blithely ironic. Modern streetwear, particularly in the West, is deeply informed by the modes and mechanisms of workwear. Brands like Off-White, Heron Preston, VISVIM, Supreme, and A.P.C. have all used workwear textures, in one way or another, at different frequencies; larger brands, like Vetements and Opening Ceremony, have brokered collaborations with Carhartt and Dickies, respectively. But when a pair of overalls — once $80 (adjusted for inflation) in 1950 — now cost $298 from streetwear brands, where can you approximate the line between purpose and pretense?

009 | THE FUTURE OF WORK

And while streetwear and traditional workwear brands alike are broadening their focus to women, it’s often simply a marketing focus — with little-to-no thought about what feminine-but-functional design could look like, instead copying and cutting the men’s sizes a tad smaller. Some brands though — like Gamine Workwear, Rosies, and even A.P.C. — have created a new temperature for women’s workwear in recent years: informed by women’s work, labor witnessing, and what it means to imagine blue-collar workwear that doesn’t, in Lewis’ words, service workers in a “self-righteous way.” That empathy in both brand decision and design may be the only way workwear doesn’t go extinct.