20 Forgotten Work Outfits Built To Survive Brutal Old Jobs

Augustus Siebe, a German-born inventor in London, constructed in 1837 a suit for salvage divers and harbor builders working among sharp shipwreck debris in the cold waters of harbors, bays, and piers. He covered canvas with vulcanized rubber and fastened it to a copper helmet and brass breastplate. To keep the diver standing on the sea floor, Siebe made shoes with 16-pound lead soles and added weight to the chest. All this equipment weighed approximately 190 pounds. It was the first successful deep-sea working suit, and it became standard for more than a century.

When World War II began, American women went to work in aircraft and ship factories. These women became symbolized by Rosie the Riveter. Loose dresses got caught up in lathes and other industrial equipment. The factories responded by providing them with heavy denim dungarees, made specifically for the female body: high-waisted, wide-legged, with buttons on the side, pockets for tools, and double-kneed. They were supplied by Lee, Wrangler, and Carhartt. This was the first time that a significant number of women wore heavy denim pants. Jeans would not be popular in everyday life for many decades.

After World War I, Army veteran Edward W. Bullard went back home to his father’s mining-supply company. Coal miners were issued boiled, hardened leather pit caps that offered little protection from the rocks that could fall down in the low, jagged seams. So, in 1919, Bullard came up with a design for a “Hard-Boiled” helmet based on the military steel helmets he had seen soldiers wearing: canvas steamed in glue and painted black, topped off with leather. This would be the precursor to today’s industrial hard hat.

Estate hunt servants worked for landowning families in Britain and Ireland, responsible for maintaining the hounds of their employers’ hunt. They spent 10 to 12 hours each day in the saddle, driving over hawthorn hedges in driving rain and sucking mud. The heavy 32-ounce “thornproof” wool coats were not dressy clothing. They were double-stitched, oiled, dyed scarlet, and designed to fall to the calves or lower to give the rider some protection. When the coats began to look faded, grubby, and weathered, the color became known as “hunting pink.”

The gaffers and gatherers worked for hours at a time beside a furnace that was glowing at over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit and occasionally spitting out splashes of molten glass. The workers’ ordinary leather shoes blackened within days, due to the heat of the floor radiating from beneath them. So they wore heavy cowhide aprons to shield themselves from the occasional splash of molten glass, and wooden clogs made from either alder or beech trees to keep their feet safe from the scorching floor while avoiding burning through.

Back in the 1850s, women on the islands of Guernsey and Jersey (Channel Islands) hand-knitted sweaters called ganseys for the fishermen hauling wet nets out of their open boats. The sweater is knitted in one piece from unprocessed wool that still has the lanolin, or natural fat, which makes it waterproof and warm. The body of the sweater can be turned inside out and back again, making it last longer. The gusset under the arm permits movement of the arm without restriction. Every woman knew how to knit a particular pattern for her own family. Each fishing village had its own pattern. A popular legend holds that the stitches of the pattern could be recognized on a drowned man’s body to tell him from which village he hailed, but there is no evidence that any official registry of stitches was maintained for that purpose.

In 1888, George Key, a tailor from Rugeley in Staffordshire, made the donkey jacket for “navvies,” men digging out the Manchester Ship Canal in England who carried heavy timber beams, wet sacks, and iron rails on their shoulders. A regular wool coat would rip, and rain would come through. Made of dense Melton wool without a lining, the coat is hip-length, has a high turn-up collar, and has a leather yoke on the shoulders. For decades, it was the uniform of miners and of men working on civil engineering projects all over Britain.

There was no heating in the early Royal Navy submarines. There was condensation, diesel fumes, cold and wet decks where men stood on the deck watch and were drenched with spray. The Admiralty issued a heavy wool sweater for men to work in during World War I and standardized it during World War II. It was ecru or white wool with a deep roll-neck collar that folded double, long ribbed cuffs, and a hem long enough to reach the lower back when bending over machinery.

Lumberjacks needed a garment that was warm, could withstand scraping against bark and underbrush, and wouldn’t trip them up while they walked across a floating log jam. By 1910, they had a solution: the Mackinaw coat, a hip-length, double-breasted jacket made of thick woolen fabric dyed in a bright red-and-black check pattern. It stayed warm even when wet, and snow wouldn’t stick to it, since it fell just below the hips and didn’t hang over the legs.

In 1868, dress reformer Susan Taylor Converse of Utica, New York, patented a one-piece undergarment called the union suit. The workers, who were loggers and coal miners working in freezing camps, typically wore two-piece underwear, which let in drafts and coal dust at the waist. The union suit plugged this gap by covering both the torso and legs in one piece of heavy ribbed wool or cotton, and fastening front and back with buttons. The rear flap could be undone for bathroom visits without exposing the whole torso to the cold.

When George Kromer worked as a locomotive engineer in Wisconsin, he’d lose his hat to the subzero winds that rushed through the open cab windows, the kind of wind that causes frostbite. In 1903, his wife, Ida, who worked as a seamstress, made him a six-panel wool cap with an earband that fits close to the head. The band has a cloth lining, and it ties in front to keep the wind out. It worked, and soon the Kromer Cap Company’s caps were being worn by railroad workers and loggers throughout the Midwest.

In the 1840s, fishermen and merchant sailors throughout the North Atlantic were suffering from a straightforward problem: when they donned a normal brimmed hat, any rain or sea spray coming at them would run down their hat brim into their collars. A sou’wester solved the issue with an asymmetrical brim that was short in the front to allow for better visibility and extended long in the back like a gutter, along with ear flaps that could be tied under the chin. Crafted from oiled cotton canvas, the sou’wester became the standard storm hat for mariners at sea, long before synthetic rain hoods existed.

Clinton Filson, a Seattle outfitter, patented his version of the cruiser jacket in 1914. It was meant for the timber cruisers, surveyors, and foresters who could spend weeks trekking through the rainy wilderness of the Pacific Northwest, marking off areas of forest to be logged. His jacket had four pockets on the front and a double-layer back big enough to hold a map flat while keeping it dry. Originally made of wool, it was later made of Tin Cloth, a heavier, stiffer, waxed canvas, in the 1920s. It became a standard uniform for the U.S. Forest Service.

Boiler washers, stokers, and coal trimmers crawled through small, hot iron tubes to remove soot and scale from the boilers of steam locomotives and ships. Jackets and pants, worn separately, hung up on rivets and allowed burning coals to enter at the waist. By the 1910s, workers adopted a single garment: thick cotton canvas or denim, lined with a smooth fabric that wouldn’t catch, and fastened with covered brass buttons to keep them from scratching the machinery. This became the model for today’s work coveralls.

The steam engines that powered trains coated the engineers, firemen, and brakemen who operated them in coal dust, oil, and hot water, destroying and discoloring their solid-color work clothes. By the end of the 1800s, railroad workers began wearing bib overalls made of heavy twill in blue and white stripes, a choice made because of how effectively they concealed grime. The twill fabric’s tight weave also protected against rips when caught on levers. In 1924, the U.S. Bureau of Standards formally codified the style.

From the 1780s until the 1880s, laborers in England spent long hours outdoors. Farmworkers, shepherds, carters, and wagoners all wore loose, outer garments called smock-frocks. These were usually made of either coarse linen or heavy wool. The fabric was pleated and then smocked with tight stitches running horizontally across the chest, back, and cuffs. This formed a dense double layer of material, keeping out wind and rain but giving enough extra space in the sleeve for movement. While the style of smocking used might seem to suggest the wearer’s occupation, researchers found that the actual smocking used on garments was decorative and changed with the area.

During the late 1880s through the 1920s, range riders and cattle drovers on the Northern Great Plains discovered that regular smooth leather chaps would freeze solid in the deep cold of a subzero blizzard, and they didn’t offer much warmth when working around the roundup pens during winter months. Dealers such as the Visalia Stock Saddle Company offered long-pile Angora goat hair or thick sheepskin flocked chaps that shed the wind and sleet and retained body heat. This allowed ranching to continue year-round instead of stopping over the winter.

From the 1880s through the 1930s, newsboys, apprentices, dockers, and factory boys in industrial cities in Britain and North America required a head covering that was affordable, sturdy, and protected their hair from dust and machine oil. The eight-panel cap met all those requirements. Its body was heavy wool tweed or canvas, with a button on top, a short stiff brim, and a full crown that could be folded up and stowed in a coat pocket. It made for a practical cap, and it’s easy to understand why plenty of adult dockers and factory workers wore the same caps as the young guys.

In 1894, John Barbour opened a shop in South Shields, northeast England, where he outfitted seamen, dockhands, and harbor pilots who worked on the North Sea. The wind off that part of the world gets down to zero, and the men’s linseed-oiled oilskins stiffen up, letting seawater seep inside. Barbour made them jackets of heavy cotton impregnated with wax, with a storm collar of corduroy, a brass throat latch, and handwarmer pockets lined with fleece. Then, a more sophisticated version came out in the 1920s and 1930s. This time, it was treated with paraffin.

In 1844, the French textile industrialist Louis Lafont founded his business in Lyon, France. In 1896, his grandson, Adolphe Lafont, obtained a trademark for the uniform, making it the official design. Workers such as railway employees, machinists, and other tradesmen needed an outfit that hung loosely on them, preventing it from getting caught in machinery and disguising any oil stains. Thus, the result was a boxy-cut garment featuring a flush collar and three wide patch pockets. The garment was made of a Prussian blue cotton drill and earned French laborers the moniker blue-collar workers, still used today.

This content was created with the help of AI.