How to identify a French chore jacket –your guide to finding and buying a French workwear garment.
French workwear has almost become a generic term (think French doors, French fries etc), and the way some garments are sold, you can not be sure of the provenance. Here we help you to learn more about French workwear and how to identify it.
Fabric, cut & detailing
Two main fabrics are used for French workwear, a nice thick cotton twill or a very tight moleskine cotton twill. The ‘toile’ canvas was produced in factories across France and sometimes you would see a label for the brand producing the jacket, and one for the fabric manufacturer. We wrote about moleskine workwear here.
The fabrics fall and carry themselves differently even with garments of similar cuts, we try to show some examples here.
The cut and detailing:
Contrary to their German counterparts, French chore garments have a more elaborate pattern, the garments almost always have cuffs, very often a round collar, and very often double stitching for the pockets on the upper side of the pocket – the German pockets will be reinforced on the lower side.
Please note some chore jackets have pockets with no reinforcement. They would have been at the lower end of pricing, but they are still very well made.
Buttons most likely metallic (not so common), wood, corozo or plastic (most common) will help you date the piece as well.
Branding and a combination of elements
There were hundreds of brands in the 1930s, 40s and up to the 1960s, with globalisation the number of French workwear brands diminished. Today some remain and some famous ones are Le Mont St Michel, Vetra or Le Laboureur. However one should not obsess over these, either they didn’t exist (Le Laboureur didn’t start until the late 1940s, they were selling workwear at markets before starting their own brand) or competed with dozens of other fabulous brands such as Le Pigeon Voyageur, Barbe Bleue, Bleu de Verdun, Au Fusil, Dumont D’Uville or La Chaîne des Vosges, to name but a few.
They had their specificity such Le Mineur in Northern France obviously dressed the minors of the region (we should do a special article about the brand names, they are very interesting).
Unfortunately many manufacturers only used a paper label stitched or stapled to the garment, so it would go after purchase, leaving us future wearers and buyers without a clue. This applies to many jackets. A chore jacket found with its original paper label makes it quite special.
Thankfully for us, some brands will have a tag or label inside the garment on the chest pocket, this helps us identify the jacket easily of course and date it.
Branding and logo visuals evolved over the years. The ribbon used for the tag also changed, from embroidery to printing.
When there is no branding as is quite common (the paper label is gone), some details can help you find the manufacturer, such as the shape of the cuffs or the style of the size label. These are small clues that add up and help you paint a picture.
All these elements help you identify and the date the workwear garment. But your garment may not be French at all.
France was not the only industrialised nation in Europe and other countries produced their own workwear within their textile industry, developing their own style. The pieces are always in cotton but the texture and weight change. For instance, Italian chore jackets always have a lapel collar and sewn on belt at the back, they are a bit longer than their French counterparts.
We can read about German jackets and how they differ from French ones here, we wrote a small piece about East German jackets here.
Trousers pants deserve a section of their own which we should write soon.
Do get in touch if you have any questions.