One of the more iconic garments in menswear, or at least men's workwear, the chore jacket - or bleu de travail - as it was originally known, is one of those timeless wardrobe staples that has hardly veered from the original design, and this season Favourbrook has reimagined it to create our own versatile Artist Jacket.
From our London vantage point, we need to peer across the channel to discover where the roots of the chore jacket lie. We needn’t strain our eyes too far, for it's in the majestic coastal town of Mont Saint Michel, where one of the very first manufacturers of the chore jacket still remains today. Such longevity is indicative of the chore jacket’s enduring appeal over the last 150 or so years.
As the name might suggest, the jacket’s original intention was a strictly utilitarian one, designed to be worn by the French proletariat and blue-collar workers (hence the bleu de travail name), specifically railroad labourers and engineers in the late 1800s whose jobs required a tough yet lightweight jacket that could be easily patched up, and replete with three or four exterior pockets to carry small tools and, no doubt, a sandwich or two. It needed to withstand the rigours of daily use, hence it was typically constructed from a hardwearing cotton drill or moleskin and dyed in a ‘hydrone’ blue hue.
