Workwear struggles when people work less
For more than 14 months, Gary Ely has quietly shown up for a job he no longer has at Caplan’s Army Store in St. Johnsbury, Vermont.
Caplan’s, a workwear outpost in the heart of town, long enjoyed a loyal base of blue-collar customers, including maple sugarers, railroad workers and grain millers. The store was owned by the same family through multiple generations. Dave Caplan, the most recent owner, moved away from military surplus and introduced more workwear and outdoor gear for camping, fishing and hunting.
It had weathered the town’s economic challenges, but it couldn’t contend with the pandemic, which crashed the local economy, disrupted the supply chain and forced more commerce online. The store closed just shy of its 100th birthday, on Dec. 31, 2020.
Ely, 84, was hired as Caplan’s in-house tailor when he was 16. In the nearly 70 years he worked there, he altered thousands of trousers for bodies of every shape and size. One gentleman, he recalled, had “a 60-inch waist and 19 ½-inch legs!”
Workwear duing the pandemic
Founded more than
130 years ago as an unpretentious overalls manufacturer, Carhartt has become a brand beloved by folk artists, rappers, oil riggers, skaters and the fashion week crowd. All of its constituents appreciate its high quality and signature canvas: thick duck fabric. It also holds a strong if intangible allure as a romanticized emblem of the humble, flinty American worker.
But as millions of jobs that require steel-toed boots and well-built overalls
have moved overseas, younger workers are largely averse to traditional trades, leaving these types of jobs unfilled. Carhartt, meanwhile, has adapted to these new dynamics.
Its stores often pop up in urban and suburban areas. Just as Patagonia sells rock climbing jackets to bankers, Carhartt now sells logging pants to baristas.
And while these new customers endure jokes and memes mocking their clean-cut personas, the politics of wearing (or not wearing) Carhartt seem to be more muddled. Heated dialogue recently erupted after the company decided to enforce President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate despite a Supreme Court ruling that it was unconstitutional. The move spurred conservative talk of a boycott, while arousing liberal defenders. Somehow, though, Carhartt has succeeded in appealing to its blue-collar emblems, like Sarah Palin, while appealing to new fans, like Barack Obama.
“We don’t look for differences, we look for common values,” said Janet Ries, vice president for marketing at Carhartt. “That’s how we’ve been able to cast a durable net.” The company still makes plenty of rugged workwear, but it is also expanding its designs to appeal to new buyers, like women and millennials.
But a new mindset yearns for an old world, where work was tangible and tough.
Carhartt has pivoted before
In 1889, in a Detroit loft, Hamilton Carhartt manufactured overalls with two sewing machines and five employees for railroad workers, some of whom offered design input. Carhartt offered generous benefits and a concept that was innovative at the time: the 40-hour workweek. In 1921, the San Francisco Chronicle marveled that Carhartt workers earned “twice as much as the average paid college professor and nearly three times as
much as many of our ministers of the gospel.”
The Great Depression forced most Carhartt plants to close and nearly drove the company into bankruptcy, but it pivoted, starting its Back to the Land campaign, which focused on bringing production out of urban centers and into the rural South. In 1932, Carhartt built a plant in Irvine, Kentucky, one of the most impoverished places in America at the time.
Carhartt’s Depression-era investments in the South yielded new customers, namely ranchers and farmers. Another loyal constituency was born in the 1970s, when workers on the Alaskan oil pipeline took to the clothing.
The company now has more than 5,500 employees around the world and sells about 4 million of its knit hats — its most ubiquitous product — each year.
Fashion loves Carhartt, too
Nearly 300 miles south of St. Johnsbury, Carhartt’s Work in Progress line hangs sparsely in a highend boutique, which is scheduled to expand, in the SoHo district of Manhattan. Formed in 1994 through a licensing deal with Swiss denim designer Edwin Faeh, Work in Progress targets disaffected youth, skateboarders and other street dwellers.
When Faeh discovered Carhartt at a Parisian flea market, he felt that duck canvas was the next denim. In the late 1980s, while visiting Vermont with his wife to scope out promising American styles, he looked up Carhartt in a phone book, called the company on a whim and secured an appointment. The next day, he made the long drive to the Detroit headquarters. There, he pitched, and soon after secured, a European distribution deal, a move that laid the groundwork for Faeh to license the logo for a streetwear offshoot.
It happened to be good timing. Carhartt had just finished a line of 800 customized jackets for Tommy Boy Records, and executives were becoming aware of the brand’s expanding customer base. Alex Guerrero, the global product chief of Carhartt, said Faeh’s line allowed the company to protect its heritage and expand its customer base, all without having to directly “stretch themselves into fashion.”
Women work just as hard as men
While Work in Progress clothes are designed for the streets, the design team for the traditional brand frequently visits job sites like wind farms and logging trails. It also sends prototype gear to what’s called “the crew”: a group of 3,000 ranchers, electricians, plumbers and other tradespeople. The brand has also expanded in other directions.
Phoebe Weisenfield,
32, a vergable farmer, got her first pair of Carhartts, made for men, once she began fencing cows, in high school. “They never really fit right,” she said. “But I made them work.”
When Guerrero arrived at Carhartt seven years ago, he discovered that the company had previously tried to connect with women and failed. “We went down the standard route,” he said. “To shrink and pink the men’s line.”
Just as Hamilton Carhartt had solicited feedback from male railroad workers, Guerrero and his team started listening to tradeswomen. “They were giving up durability for comfort,” he said. “We found a nylon fabric that could endure.”
Weisenfield appreciates the company’s newer line of women’s workwear, which happens to be its fastest-growing, according to the company. She said these new clothes are comfortable, withstand every season and also make clear an important fact: “Women work just as hard as men.”