The Politics of the Workwear Trend

Graphic by guest designer Tori Wilkins (http://toriwilkins.com).

In 2019, New Balance released an ad campaign for their 990v5 model sneakers with the slogan: “Worn by supermodels in London and dads in Ohio.” Now, four years later, this phrase best sums up the workwear trend. It’s everywhere you look. Kaia Gerber pulls on her Carhartt jacket for a pap walk. Sydney Sweeney is on TikTok teaching you car maintenance in her Dickies overalls. And, of course, that South Campus man in your seminar definitely has more than a few pieces of workwear in his wardrobe.

Workwear – or the technical garments that make up the uniforms of blue-collar workers – has been ubiquitous across many cultural niches for seemingly forever. Back in the ‘90s, rappers wore Timberland boots and Carhartt denim shirts because the oversized, tough garments perfectly projected the swagger and grittiness of the hip-hop scene. Those in the Chicano culture adopted the style to reflect the earlier boxy outfits of Latin American youths, from zoot suits to flannels. Skater boys in the early aughts wore workwear to stay comfortable on the half pipe. Hipsters adopted the pieces in the 2010s as part of their anti-mainstream shtick, and queer people embraced workwear for its androgynous look.

It’s easy to see why the style is so popular. Even as inflation fluctuates, workwear brands remain generally affordable: a pair of Dickies jeans will set you back about $50. They’re durable, made of quality materials that last. In a society becoming more concerned with consumerism and sustainability, workwear seems to be a solid alternative.

Workwear is reaching new heights as it enters the world of high fashion. Celebrities and models are incorporating the pieces into their off-duty looks, and established fashion houses such as Balenciaga are riffing on workwear shapes in their runway collections. Carhartt has even launched its own brand offshoot, Carhartt WIP, to produce more stylistic, high-fashion pieces, at high-fashion prices.

This new high-fashion treatment of workwear gets at the uncomfortable irony of the trend; rich people in New York and Los Angeles are now obsessed with clothes created for and still worn by blue-collar workers.

Brady Bell, 30, is a heavy equipment operator for Beaver County in the panhandle of Oklahoma. Right out of college, he found work with an electric company, which gave workers an allowance to buy flame-retardant clothing.

“It was the first time where what I was wearing, it mattered,” Bell said. “You're wearing equipment that allows you to go home every single day.”

Though he’s had other jobs since, workwear has remained a staple in his wardrobe for practical purposes.

“Now I live on a farm,” Bell said. “This morning I was looking at the horses, making sure they were fed, [the] chickens, all the eggs collected, and [during] all of this, I’m having to go through barbed wire fence and out in the dirt and rattlesnakes, coyotes…I’ve always just thought of it as equipment.”

To many living in rural, working-class America, workwear has always been for just that: work. As the country expanded westward in the 19th century, workwear became standard for those in the railroad industry. Later, lumberjacks bundled up in Pendleton jackets, and truckers and mechanics threw on hats to keep their hair out of their faces and sweat off their brows. Although an influencer might love their double knee pants or quilted jacket because it looks cool, those features are there for practical, not stylistic, purposes.

There’s nothing wrong with wearing pieces for fashion rather than function, but there is an inherent power imbalance in glamorizing a lower class’ work uniform. This isn’t a new phenomenon in high fashion – Chanel’s iconic little black dress was directly inspired by maid uniforms – but class dynamics in America are often under-discussed. This makes it difficult to consider what is or isn’t class appropriation, since class intersects with other social identities such as race.

It’s also ironic that the workwear trend grows as the industrial sector is fading. On TikTok, you’ll see people “thanking” blue-collar workers for donating their used workwear so others can thrift it for fashion purposes. User @max4cracks made a video saluting construction workers, saying, “Not all heroes wear capes: somebody has to wear the vintage Carhartt before it’s vintage.” Another user, @macweejuns, said, “Thank you to the Republican blue-collar man who donated this jacket…so that a soft-handed leftist who has never performed manual labor in his life, with a six-step skincare routine, painted nails, and a tattoo of a cow wearing a cardigan, can wear this with his little loafers.”

The portrayal of industrial workers in these sorts of jokes is often stereotyping, bordering on dehumanizing. Further, there’s the uncomfortable aspect of positioning yourself as superior to another since you’ve never had to do manual labor. Bell compared wealthy people wearing workwear to having a souped-up truck.

“For the people that are in the city, it’s a very impressive-looking vehicle,” he said. “Now you take that same person, and you drive that truck into…any place that is just out in the boondocks. I guarantee you that there’s a truck that looks like it should be in a dump that can whup that truck’s ass, because it’s not about how it looks. It’s about how it functions.”

The workwear trend doesn’t really bother Bell. He’s more amused by it.

“Why do you need clothing that you can drag your knife across and it doesn’t cut open? Are you outside working?” he joked. “We look at it from a realistic, logical standpoint because that's just what we know.”

Workwear’s practical nature is, of course, what makes it a mainstay of not only blue-collar work uniforms but also a variety of diverse subcultures. Arguing about appropriation likely won’t get anyone anywhere.

While it’s important to be conscious of the context behind your favorite Ariat shirt or your Dickies overalls, perhaps we can instead celebrate the fact that workwear has such a wide appeal and holds value across race, gender, sexuality, class and political affiliation – everything that defines and divides Americans. High fashion will lose interest eventually, but workwear will remain for the people.