With an entourage of image creators behind her, it was no surprise that Kate Middleton included a pair of dungarees in her Vogue photo spread. Sticking to the protocol of non-threatening dressing (and nodding to Princess Diana), the choice shone a light on where they stand in the spectrum of fashion. Too baggy and shapeless to be termed androgynous, too norm to be normcore, dungarees are problematically wholesome. The defiantly unprovocative nature of the garment is part of its appeal – recent history has seen them featured in the collections of Margaret Howell, as well as on the likes of Alexa Chung. Dungarees are the Peter Pan of clothing – they never grew up. Which is odd, considering their origin at the foothills of 20th-century US history.
The classic image of dungarees comes from Grant Wood’s painting American Gothic, which features a glum-looking Depression-era farmer wearing a pair of navy blue dungarees flecked with dirt. It was the perfect bit of costuming for Wood’s painting: dungarees were synonymous with the blue collar, Protestant work ethic. As well as farmers (they were originally called “slops”), they were worn by people who worked on the railroads for two prosaic reasons: they were easy to slip on and off; and they could protect the good clothes worn underneath. Functional clothes for functional living.
Although there was an attempt to sex them up in the 60s (attached to hotpants, for example), dungarees never lost their rustic appeal. In the following decades, they became synonymous with non-threatening (Dexy’s Midnight Runners) and plummy, outdoorsy (Felicity Kendall in Surrey fantasy The Good Life) looks.
By the 90s, they were adopted by the Mario Brothers and the likes of Will Smith in the Fresh Prince and TLC (there were two ways of wearing dungarees – with one strap undone and one leg rolled up); pop stars with a large teenage fan base. Winona Ryder’s appearance on the cover of Rolling Stone in 1994, wearing a pair, played on the idea of her as an indie film ingenue (New York magazine paid homage with Elisabeth Moss in 2014).
In 2012, Man Repeller extolled the values of the overall, highlighting its nostalgic qualities, taking you “back to the 90s” when you “jumped rope”, but also the strange, sexless quality of the garment. It was a sentiment that was echoed by My So-Called Life costume designer Patrick R Norris, when explaining the special quality of Angela Chase’s dungarees, a stalwart of her post-grunge wardrobe. “They’re comfortable, they’re non-threatening. In a way, I was always able to keep a balance with those overalls: it was vulnerable, it was safe, it was protected. You could even dump a plaid dress on top of it, which we did.”
In the fashion world, that’s the beauty – and the problem – with dungarees: they never, ever change.
.jpg?w=600)
