Railway Blues

Typical in Workers Blues are the railroad workers; be it the engine drivers or the folks laying the tracks. 

French Work Jacket - unknown manufacture - 1920's

 
Repaired on numerous occasions, this 1920s French work jacket has some distinctive elements like a small collar and a top button. It is the witness of an era and an environment where clothes were repaired more than once, before they were dumped.

Adolphe Lafont

Vintage advertising by Adolphe Lafont, one of France's big bleu de travail manufacturers.

Mao Suits

A close relative of the Bleu de Travail is the Mao Suit.

After the end of the Chinese Civil War and the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, such suits came to be worn widely by males and government leaders as a symbol of proletarian unity and an Eastern counterpart to the Western business suit. The name "Mao suit" comes from Chinese leader Mao Zedong's fondness for wearing them in public, so that the garment became closely associated with him and with Chinese communism in general in the Western imagination. Although they fell into disuse among the general public in the 1990s due to increasing Western influences, they are still commonly worn by Chinese leaders during important state ceremonies and functions.

Electrochemical Artificial Egg Factory

An April Fools Day Joke from 1913.

The caption in the newspaper article tells of workers in an artificial "electrochemical egg factory".

Bill Cunningham (2)

“We all get dressed for Bill,” says Vogue editrix Anna Wintour.

The “Bill” in question is 80+ New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham. For decades, this Schwinn-riding cultural anthropologist has been obsessively and inventively chronicling fashion trends and high society charity soirées for the Times Style section in his columns “On the Street” and “Evening Hours.” Documenting uptown fixtures (Wintour, Tom Wolfe, Brooke Astor, David Rockefeller—who all appear in the film out of their love for Bill), downtown eccentrics and everyone in between, Cunningham’s enormous body of work is more reliable than any catwalk as an expression of time, place and individual flair. In turn, Bill Cunningham New York is a delicate, funny and often poignant portrait of a dedicated artist whose only wealth is his own humanity and unassuming grace.

Striking French Workers Asleep at the Factory

Workers on strike at the car factories of Renault and Citroën who refuse to leave the factory. 

Vintage Advertising by Adolphe Lafont

Vintage advertising by one of France's old time manufacturers, Adolphe Lafont. 

HaVeP 3014

The HaVeP 3014 is a Dutch Bleu de Travail that has been in continuous production since the 1950s.

It is one of my personal favourites in 100% K1 2/1 twill weave cotton (300 gr/m2) and fitted with 4 large pockets and a double row of buttons. 

Long lasting (I bought mine new some 30 years ago at my local farmers supply store and still going strong) and from a brand with a long illustrious history (later more on that).

Bill Cunningham

William J. Cunningham (1929 - 25 June, 2016) was a fashion photographer for The New York Times, known for his candid street photography.

Bill dropped out of Harvard University in 1948 and moved to New York, where he initially worked in advertising. Not long after, he quit his job and struck out on his own, making hats under the name “William J.” After being drafted and serving a tour in the U.S. Army, he returned to New York and got a job writing for the Chicago Tribune. During his years as a writer, he contributed significantly to fashion journalism, introducing American audiences to Azzedine Alaia and Jean-Paul Gaultier. While working at the Tribune and at Women’s Wear Daily, he began taking photographs of fashion on the streets of New York. As the result of a chance photograph of Greta Garbo, he published a group of his impromptu pictures in the Times in December 1978, which soon became a regular series. His editor, Arthur Gelb, has called these photographs “a turning point for the Times, because it was the first time the paper had run pictures of well-known people without getting their permission.”

Bill photographs people and the passing scene in the streets of Manhattan every day. Most of his pictures, he has said, are never published. Designer Oscar de la Renta has said, “More than anyone else in the city, he has the whole visual history of the last 40 or 50 years of New York. It’s the total scope of fashion in the life of New York.” 

Though he has made a career out of unexpected photographs of celebrities, socialites, and fashion personalities, many in those categories value his company. According to David Rockefeller, Brooke Astor asked he be invited to her 100th birthday party, the only member of the media so honored.
And yes, never without his Working Blues.

Train Drivers

Vintage

1940's Mont St Michel

 Unknown brand and date, French origin

 Unknown brand and date, French origin

HaVeP - Bleu de Travail from the Lowlands

HaVeP (B.V. Textielfabrieken H. Puijenbroek) is a family business in Goirle (Netherlands) owned by the Van Puijenbroek family. The company was founded in 1865 and manufactured linen and from 1935 manufacturer of workwear.

The company was founded in 1865 by Henry of Puijenbroek and expanded in 1891, the looms now powered by a steam engine. After the factory was taken over by five sons in 1901, a strike broke out in 1904. The reason for this was that the weavers were allowed to work only three days and were paid no wages for the remaining days during the summer months. Also, seven workers were laid off immediately and all the older weavers had to leave the firm before 1915. The strike was eventually won by the (Catholic) union after mediation by Alfons Ariëns.

Weaver standing in front of a loom, 1884, Vincent van Gogh 

In 1908 there was another strike. This occurred as a result of the decision to mechanize the wallpaper production, hitherto manufactured by weavers from their homes. It was decided that none of the weavers would do this. When the work was actually refused, practically all employees were denied access to the factory the gates were closed.

In unison, all other companies in Goirle (except Van Besouw) joined the strike. All this led to major conflicts that would take a long time to solve completely. However, home weaving was at its very end by 1908. The firm A. Spapens-Huijbregts, which almost exclusively worked with home weavers, closed in 1920.

In 1917, the supply of raw materials was disrupted so much by WWI, that HaVeP closed shop and only restarted in 1919. The economic crisis of the 1930s led to more great difficulties. In 1932, half of the staff was fired.

In 1933 HaVeP started manufacturing woollen clothes and in 1935 the production of workwear. The mobilization (pre WWII) brought orders from the army and in 1939 a record number of 1,200 employees worked for  HaVeP. In 1944, the company started working on shirts for the Canadian Army (after the liberation of the southern part of the Netherlands by Canadians) and in 1945 HaVeP made uniforms for the Dutch soldiers who were fighting the independence fighters in the Dutch Indies (Indonesia).

The company expanded further with its own mill in 1959. Workers were hired from near and far, by 1965 the company opening workshops in Hattem, Apeldoorn, Eindhoven and Meerhout (Belgium). Later part of the production moved to low-wage countries such as Macedonia (1968) and Tunisia (1975). In 1985, a new weaving mill opened while 1992 saw the end to the large military orders. In 2004, the mill in Tilburg was closed and a new modern weaving mill was built in Goirle.

The machine house from 1891 is classified as a national monument. It contains an almost entirely complete steam engine supplied by Werkspoor.

The parent company of HaVeP, Koninklijke Van Puijenbroek Textiles, produces a variety of protective workwear, including the original workers jacket 3014.

Working Blues

Working Blues, Bleu de Travail; workwear made of 100% cotton; dyed in Bugatti Blue, navy or Bleu de France; comfortable, functional and practical; lasting for decades; no nonsense clothing with a high disregard for fashion until it became fashionable for what it is. 
And every workday a new post here!