Who Gets to Wear Workwear?

[Aloysius]

Are you sure about that? I mean, full bespoke tailoring in Europe, from a well known tailor in a main city, do not goes under 6000 euros for a 2 pieces suit. In Naples, if you know the guy, you can find better prices from amazing artisans...but this is not accessible to everybody

I am speaking from experience. Some of these firms even have their prices posted online.

And many of the off Row firms in London have cutters with extremely strong Savile Row pedigree—better than some still on the Row—such as Jon Duboise formerly of Nutter. Off Row in London runs about 1500 pounds, which is about 30% higher than a decade ago.

None of this is meant as a knock on any of the workwear brands, to be clear. They put a ton of labour and materials and research into what they do. But the thing is at that cost there are other things I’d rather get.

 

[The Lost Cowboy]

In China, the gateway for a shift from being a villager to a city dweller is factory work. I know this first hand and believe it is the same in many countries.

What is significant about this is that villages in China are notoriously simple and communistic (the villages are overseen by a completely different governmental department than the cities, which are, for all intents and purposes, modern and capitalistic).

I'm sure other members have spent even more time in China than I have and can correct me if I'm wrong, but I have spoken to a number of factory workers in China (and their children) and they have all preferred the factory to the village. The village is extremely restrictive and literally dead end, whereas even the lowest factory work allows some opportunity for personal growth and personal agency/decisiveness. And again I believe it's the same throughout Asia (i know it to be the case in Malaysia as well, though village life is not nearly as restrictive in Malaysia).

Knowing this, I am always frustrated by westerners who go on and on about "sweat shops" and "fair wages" etc. The situation is far more complex. Take the recent Bangladeshi garment industry workers' strike: everyone is on about Bangladeshi garment workers' rights and that's true, but the fact is there would not be a political consciousness among Bangladeshi garment workers if they had not been first organized by so-called "exploitative" capitalistic forces. They would still be villagers without any real sense of political consciousness.

I'm far from saying 'yay exploitation'. I'm just saying there's good and bad in almost everything even fast fashion - to the point that not everything is as simple as "purchase more consciously". Unless we believe the modernization of Asia is fundementally a bad thing (which is a worthwhile discussion and a good case study might be Tibet), than it is very very hard to dismiss "sweat shops" as simply exploitative because in many places these factories have literally been the fundamental building block for improving the lived experiences of the locals. Or are we so intent to bemoan the demise of some romantic notions of Asian rural lifestyles (that never truly existed anyway in the way we imagine them) that we want to condemn factory workers in Asia to true lifelong impoverishment with no hope at all of escape - because that is what the village is even today in many parts of Asia.

The village is utterly nowheresville, and like it or not, the fast fashions of the west have been the engine of escape for many of those people. Exploitative? Sure. But the alternative for many of the locals is even worse which is why many of them would love to have a factory job.

(BTW, since I'm actually typing this in Bangkok: the same can be said for sex workers in Thailand. I have talked to many of them and to a person all the women I have talked to would rather be doing sex work in Bangkok than living in Isan which seems to be the end of the world to them. Does that mean, "yay for the sex industry in Thailand'? No. It simply means our moralistic posturings are more often than not exercises in self-righteousness because the actuality is way more complicated than simply "look how exploitative western consumerism is.")

Sorry this is so long, I have never tried to communicate these thoughts before. Thanks for reading and I welcome counter arguments as these are questions I have wrestled with a long time.

 

[Will Zach]

^^
Good points. Rarely (if ever) are things as black and white as we would like them to be.

 

[Edward]

I think it really does depend. Personally, I would argue most if not all "workwear" garments that are 40 years old or more are fair game as nobody is currently using those items for work.

Plus, a lot of items that are labeled as workwear from back in the day also doubled as simple casual wear. For example, most straight zip half belt leather jackets from the 30s and 40s were worn to blue collar jobs, but also sometimes worn by white collar guys as casual wear or for the outdoors. We've seen the vintage photos to prove it. To me, something like that is just clothing and not specifically workwear.

Modern workwear is often pretty specialized so you'd have to try a lot harder to be a workwear poser nowadays IMO.

Seems to me a lot comes down to how we define workwear too. I suspect it varies a lot, depending on whether you're dealing with a situation where there's a uniform (actual or defacto, based on company requirements and such). But yes... The way purpose-made stuff has evolved for manual labour, construction and such, it'll be interesting to see whether and when it ever evolves into fashion wear. Comparisons can be drawn with motorcycling gear, I would argue. A few years ago, we did actually start to see UK shops selling skintight jeans that were patterned after dedicated modern motorcycle gear (as in the sort of stuff you see racers or power ranger types wearing), and which of course would have been worse than useless on a motorcycle, so their sole purpose was fashionwear. It'll be interesting to see where this all goes in ten or twenty years.

Not necessarily.

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I've seen stuff like this sold as dedicated hiking wear before now, but nothing at this sort of price. Oh, my!

An Aero or Lewis is priced comparably to a sports jacket from an off-Row tailor; Field is priced like a two piece suit from one. The cheaper Japanese brands like a three piece. Himel is in spitting distance of a jacket from a Savile Row tailor.

Not far off. Interestingly, I realise that I ascribe value to things based on durability - I'll happily spend on a leather jacket what I might flinch at in a suit for the simple reason that a leather jacket (assuming I still fit it) will have a longer life, albeit with maybe a reline here and there, than a suit which could get mothed, and where the trousers especially will only last so long. (On the other hand, I can justify a lot more on a pair of suit trousers than I ever could jeans which I'll only wear kicking around the house or taking the dog out.) Objectively, both you can break down the cost and production process and it's very little different, both involving the skills, labour , and all the rest of it...

It's not entirely surprising, I suppose, that as those of greater financial means glom onto workwear, there's the possibility to sell upmarket (and higher price band) versions of the same, in the same way people in certain income brackets have, by and large, always spend more on suits and whatever. One of the most fascinating things I ever saw was an article about a pair of Row made jeans. To me this just seemed madness given what jeans are to me, but then if I were a minted techbro with bottomless pockets, maybe I'd want jeans made to my perfect spec rather than bother seeking them out OTR?

Are you sure about that? I mean, full bespoke tailoring in Europe, from a well known tailor in a main city, do not goes under 6000 euros for a 2 pieces suit. In Naples, if you know the guy, you can find better prices from amazing artisans...but this is not accessible to everybody

In China, the gateway for a shift from being a villager to a city dweller is factory work. I know this first hand and believe it is the same in many countries.

Without getting into the politics of it, it's certainly true that with so many things when looking at other cultures we in the West often fail to look at them through their localised cultural lense, while applying our own stereotypes to boot.

 

[Aloysius]

Not far off. Interestingly, I realise that I ascribe value to things based on durability - I'll happily spend on a leather jacket what I might flinch at in a suit for the simple reason that a leather jacket (assuming I still fit it) will have a longer life, albeit with maybe a reline here and there, than a suit which could get mothed, and where the trousers especially will only last so long. (On the other hand, I can justify a lot more on a pair of suit trousers than I ever could jeans which I'll only wear kicking around the house or taking the dog out.) Objectively, both you can break down the cost and production process and it's very little different, both involving the skills, labour , and all the rest of it...

I thought the same, but I think my position has shifted. Not the position about durability, but about what is durable. Unlike a leather jacket, a wool coat can be let in or out, meaning you can keep the thing going for decades even with size changes. And if you get a hardy English wool, they simply will not wear out unless something like moths come into play, which can be kept away with cedar. (And not all wools will attract moths equally; camelhair and cashmere very much do though.)

It was something of a wakeup call when I discovered that his tailor was altering the late Prince Philip’s trousers from the 40s (not because he’d gotten bigger but because he wanted them altered from Oxford bags to normal straight legs). Wool lasts a remarkably long time; and the older heavier wools hold their crease and shape for decades. Hard to top that.

It's not entirely surprising, I suppose, that as those of greater financial means glom onto workwear, there's the possibility to sell upmarket (and higher price band) versions of the same, in the same way people in certain income brackets have, by and large, always spend more on suits and whatever. One of the most fascinating things I ever saw was an article about a pair of Row made jeans. To me this just seemed madness given what jeans are to me, but then if I were a minted techbro with bottomless pockets, maybe I'd want jeans made to my perfect spec rather than bother seeking them out OTR?

I think there was a certain novelty value to Levi’s in London having a Row-trained cutter offering bespoke jeans, but certainly not where I would spend my money for either bespoke or jeans!