It’s richly ironic, how many sophisticated menswear garments have notably modest origin stories. Take, for example, brogues. These were originally worn by farm workers in Scotland and Ireland (the word comes from the Gaelic word, ‘bróg’, meaning ‘shoe’): hence the now decorative perforations which once existed to allow boggy water to drain away.
Or what about jeans? Their earliest descendants were riveted denim pants worn by lumberjacks, gold rush-toilers and railroad workers, until the earliest examples of the Western genre saw a utilitarian invention become a fashion must-have (to the delight of the accounts departments at Levi Strauss & Co. and other makers).
Perhaps the most striking example of a garment which has evolved from practical workwear to being a gentleman’s wardrobe staple, though, is a cousin to jeans: the chore coat – a stalwart piece of casual-chic apparel whose proletarian origins ring true in the very existence of the phrase “Blue collar worker."
The Birth of the Work Jacket
A clue to the chore coat’s beginnings lies in what they call it in the place where it first came into being: ‘bleu de travail’ (which translates as “work blues”). Simple, comfortable, unstructured, toil-worthy alternatives to the loose-fitting sacque coats (‘sack coats’), popularized in France during the 1840s, were first fashioned from moleskin or canvas. The prototype reportedly created in 1844 by Adolphe Lafont, whose eponymous brand is still operational today, had voluminous breast and hip pockets to carry tools, notebooks and the like, as well as a pointed collar. The chore coat’s traditional blue hue, which hid work-related dirt smears and grease splatters, came later, courtesy of a benzoate-based blue dye (previously used by the French military).
Between the wars, Vétra – which has been manufacturing classic French workwear in Le Mans since 1927 – along with like-minded, also still operational brands Le Laboureur and Le Mont Saint Michel began producing chore coats en masse. Precisely how the chore coat reached the US is lost in the mist of time – suffice to say, this was the height of the transatlantic passenger liner era, and a period of accelerated cultural cross-pollination. And, the romance held by clothing associated with a hard, outdoor lifestyle across The Pond (as exemplified by jeans) meant them catching on here was an inevitability.
American Legends: Levi's & Carhartt
Levi Strauss & Co. were already supplying workwear to American factory workers made of another French export, denim (legend has it that Christopher Columbus’s fleet was thrust towards the New World by sails made of the coarse, twilled cotton fabric referred to in France at the time as ‘serge de Nîmes’). And, the San Francisco company had already been making a variation on the sack coat for decades – so it’s also inevitable that the brand founded in 1853 by German-Jewish immigrant Levi Strauss would play a huge role in a market made all the more lucrative by Paul Newman and John Wayne donning chore jackets in Cool Hand Luke and True Grit respectively.
Carhartt is America’s other major protagonist in the chore coat’s history: having made their first in 1917, the Detroit-based workwear label renamed their 1923 iteration the “Engineer Sack Coat” and then experimenting with materials (their 1925 catalogue refers to “hairline stripe denim” and “herringbone drill” versions), and further tugged the garment from its working-class origins with features such as a corduroy collar and blanket lining option.
Modern Grit: The Chore Coat Today
Having long-since gate-crashed the VIP echelons of menswear, chore coats these days are a kind of hybrid of the increasingly popular ‘shacket’, and unconstructed blazer. For more recent silver screen inspiration of how to rock one, adherents to cowboy chic should check out the mustard tan tone piece worn by Josh Brolin’s Llewelyn Moss in No Country for Old Men; and Jeremy Renner wearing that rugged blanket Carhartt in Wind River.
Jackson Pollock was another famous wearer, often sporting one during his famous action painting exploits, as was street style snapper Bill Cunningham, who acquired his for $20 from the Bazaar Hotel de Ville in Paris before making it his go-to torso-wear for chronicling Manhattan’s high-society’s latest fashion penchants. Tupac Shakur also wore a denim version at the Soul Train Awards in 1993 with Rosie Perez.
A more rugged alternative to close relative safari jackets, and suitable for all seasons, chore jackets are extremely conducive to the smart-casual dichotomy that now reigns supreme, and can often prove the missing link in a bamboozling number of ensemble combos, as eloquently outlined in this blog piece, which also lists a comprehensive breakdown of our chore coats.
In short, owning and wearing a handful is anything but a chore.
