Let’s talk about our first product — A Defender. Its ideation and how it came to be.
Built like a Tank. It makes for a formidable sartorial companion.
While I type this out we are already live with our second version of it — The Defender 2.0
A thicker variant for the cold winter night. Standing at 375 GSM.
This is a testament to the toughness of the soldiers who fought in the Vietnam War. The silhouette is a representation and homage to the same.
Fearless like the warriors, this garment brings along with it a ferocity and calmness to every occasion. Fits like a glove on occasions every single time.
Our Defender 2.0 is a blend. Taking notes from the soldiers of the Vietnam war and workwear jackets ideated in France during the late 1800's.
This jacket is an extremely trustworthy piece of garment. It handles anything that is thrown at them — protects their owner from harsh conditions and offers practical on-body storage for tools.
It is our interpretation of the 1st pattern Vietnam War Jungle Jacket made for the battalions.
We have retained it’s utilitarian nature, keeping the jacket unlined and the iconic shape of the front pockets, collar and cuffs.
The silhouette has been greatly refined so as to adapt well to its new urban environment — the defender can be worn just as easily over a suit as over everyday wear.
In 1923 came the inception of what we would consider the first real work jacket, or chore coat, produced by the infamous, Detroit-based workwear brand, Carhartt. It was a takeoff from what the French conceptualised in the late 1800’s as Bleu de travail. The French Work Jacket.
While it was still being worn in the fields of rural France, it also started to weave its way into popular culture. Paul Newman was widely credited with popularising it in the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke.
But it was the late, great street-style photographer Bill Cunningham who made it a staple, riding his bike around New York with his trusty bleu on his back. After that, it was seen on the best-dressed men and women on stylish streets all over the world, giving a whole new meaning to its original use.
The late, great Bill Cunningham was many an American’s introduction to the French Chore Coat. The legend goes that this beloved New York Times fashion photographer found his first chore coat at a flea market in Paris and never looked back.
Mr. Cunningham appreciated the coat for the same reasons that workers have always donned this legendary style. It was loose-fitting, functional and had plenty of pockets for his film or whatever else he had on hand. Unlike a denim jacket, with its uniquely rebellious history, a French work coat has a slightly more refined connotation, perhaps because for so long, it was worn in the U.S. mostly by sophisticated folks in the art and fashion worlds.
The French Army had been using blue dyes for their uniforms since the mid-1800s, roughly around the time that farmers and workers first started wearing pieces that resembled the modern chore coat.
Prior to the 1800s, blue and violet dyes were the hardest to come by and consequently were reserved for monarchs and other wealthy people.
A rapidly globalizing world made indigo more accessible and drove prices down far enough to make indigo the de facto workwear dye.
