In the fashion industry, the descriptor ‘workwear’ typically describes menswear that adheres to the aesthetic of men’s garments originating for use in American, Fordist-era (1920s-1970s) manual labor professions. Such garments, like the chore coat, engineer jacket, railroad coat or dungarees—usually made from heavy denim, canvas or wool—were initially designed and manufactured for the comfort and safety of people working in industries like mining, production, railways, farming, mechanics and so on. Fashion workwear garments draw on the design and fabrication of these original workwear pieces, typically featuring sturdy fabrics, loads of pockets and anachronistic details (e.g. fob watch pockets and tool holders) and other elements that signify the garment’s durability and utility, making it a workwear piece.

Although workwear predates branding, it’s commonly associated with major heritage brands like Carhartt (since 1889) and Dickies (since 1922) who continue to make work clothing and now run fashion-orientated clothing lines that produce workwear. It is through the standardization of workwear garments by these and similar brands that sought to meet Fordist-era workers’ needs that workwear came to have coherent looks and construction. Yet, for Takeshi Ohfuchi, whose workwear-dedicated brand Post Overalls was one of the first–established in 1993–fashion brands to begin manufacturing workwear inspired clothing, “anonymous American vintage work clothes designs” are the best. The desire to identify unbranded American workwear is indicative of Post Overalls’ approach, which is to produce ‘authentic’ workwear detailing and construction with certain esoteric elements that make its garments singular. Post Overalls’ most characteristic garment is the Engineer’s Jacket, produced in different fabrics each season with details like topstitching, reinforced pockets, period hardware and fob watch pocket. As one of the most identifiable pieces of American workwear, it is through reference to the details and fabrics of more obscure vintage workwear pieces that Post Overalls’ Engineer’s Jacket continues to evolve and invite intrigue from season to season.

Produced in the USA, Post Overalls maintains a commitment to high quality fabrication and precise detailing that makes its garments as durable as the originals—particularly since its garments are unlikely to undergo the test of manual labor. With all the emphasis on the work that is involved in creating each Post Overalls piece, the vintage garment’s original use becomes obscured—its utility becomes a romantic ideal. However, it is this romantic ideal that drives a brand like Post Overalls to preserve the history and quality-driven manufacturing techniques synonymous with Fordist-era American workwear.

In contrast, Helmut Lang’s approach to American workwear was to present the garment as it appeared on the worker. His iconic 1998 painter jeans do more than simply fetishize the durability or utility of workwear, the painter jeans re-contextualise work clothing, inverting the aversion fashion had to clothing associated with ‘dirty’ manual labor. Helmut Lang gave the type of labor (painting in this instance) visibility in the material presence of the garment. Additionally, the painter jean references contemporary workwear of the time, so someone who wears the jeans on the street becomes synonymous with the manual laborer, raising the question: What types of labor are valued and devalued in fashion?

Similarly, Junya Watanabe references contemporary workwear manufacturers, while drawing inspiration from workwear heritage. Since Spring 2006, Junya has been collaborating with heritage workwear brands—the first being a range of herringbone twill and duck canvas garments produced in collaboration with Dickies. More recently this includes his Spring/Summer 2018 collaboration with Carhartt, featuring chore jackets, coats and pants that reference vintage workwear aesthetics and fabrics—like Carhartt’s iconic brown duck canvas—which is used for several pieces. By maintaining a collaborative relationship with legacy brands, Junya’s designs are more than just a reference to a period in workwear history, they make its evolution—from workwear’s origins to the contemporary—communicable. While Junya commonly draws on heritage pieces, like chore coats and carpenter pants, he temporalizes workwear—his garments carry elements of Fordist-era history through to the present development and understanding of workwear.

Labels like Junya Watanabe, and particularly Post Overalls, document and re-present historical garments that are adapted to the contemporary fashion market, while Helmut Lang was more concerned with re-contextualising contemporary workwear. An approach closer to Lang’s is seen with newer designers like Kiko Kostadinov, who draws on some of the aesthetics and technology of contemporary industrial clothing. The industrial aesthetic that runs through Kostadinov’s work, particularly his Spring/Summer 2018 collection, is present in his fabric choices, exacting patterns and monotone styling. Fabrics that appear light and high-tech are harmonized with sartorial lines that produce a clinical sensibility, while visible metallic hardware and purposeful gussets gesture to functionality over embellishment. Kostadinov’s garments are industrial and uniform-like without over-referencing a specific industry; rather than looking to workwear history and re-inventing outmoded garments, he conjures a vision of what future industry and workwear might look like. Kostadinov produces contemporary functional clothing (or workwear) that is sterile, restrained, light and responsive in a way that responds to the flux and dematerialisation of labor.

Like Kostadinov, Craig Green shifts contemporary workwear beyond the nostalgia for Fordist-era garments. With Green, there is a slippage between the notion of workwear and the uniform. This occurs most clearly in his use of color, military references, and repetitive detailing—like bondage straps and cord ties woven through outwear. His Fall/Winter 2016 collection uses military colors and garment structures—khaki and desert beige textiles, flightsuits, hoods and M-45-style jackets. There is also reference to ceremonial uniform—blanket-like, hooded garments and flowing lines evoke monks from some obscure temple—while the abstruse sculptures adorning models in his Spring/Summer 2015 collection could be sacred banners. The uniforms reference both workwear and communal dress (or identity), but not always at the same time. Like Kostadinov, Green is suggestive of the dematerialization of work—distorting the line between fashion and work uniform. Where Kostadinov’s garments are restrained and clinical, Green’s are soft and fluid; both blur the codes of ‘workwear’ and the corporate uniform, and present the possibility for uniform to be warm and romantic enough to become personal.

In a more literal approach to contemporary workwear, Heron Preston collaborated with the Department of Sanitation New York (DSNY), producing workwear that is at once new while embracing established conventions. His DSNY collection uses high-visibility taping—the most ubiquitous signifier of contemporary work clothing—on garments and accessories, along with logos, fluorescents and other elements of the actual sanitation worker’s uniform. For Heron Preston, the DSNY uniforms are never completely removed from their original contexts, as he envisions his re-iteration of the DSNY uniform being purchased and worn out on the same streets that DSNY (or other sanitation) staff work in. In the mode of artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles—whose work with DSNY about elevating maintenance labor as art spans 31 years—Preston is elevating the role of maintenance labor to something that should be valued in fashion. DSNY also demonstrates the potential for workwear to come full circle, showing that design and style are already part of work clothing, they are simply operating in a value system different to that of the fashion market. Preston hazes the line between fashion and work uniform, but from the opposite direction that Kostadinov and Green operate from.

Work in the contemporary landscape is increasingly detached from manual labor and is instead defined as whatever we do for a wage, making it harder to pin-down exactly what workwear is. It is not surprising then that we might long nostalgically for a time when work was more clearly defined, while at the same time seeking a uniform that responds to the present. Garments like the engineer’s jacket or chore coat, importantly, embody a history that is communicated through their design. Yet, workwear has always been a response to the flux of labor practices—this is most clear in the oeuvres of designers who develop new frames of reference for what industry and workwear is and will be in the future.