Workwear is having a revival. This is American workwear: there is a company that specialises in traditional British workwear (it's called Old Town Clothing, and if you want a flat cap, or any number of other things that'll make you look as if you live off bread and dripping in a house with an outside toilet, they're your go-to guys), but it's unsurprising that the focus is on the US. We tend to view American blue-collar workers more romantically than the home-grown variety. Those suburban Brits who claim to identify with Bruce Springsteen's songs about the hopes and dreams of Jersey Shore labourers probably wouldn't feel that way if he wrote about the hopes and dreams of a West Midlands shop steward called Barry: "One day, Sandra, I'm gonna fire up the Astra, hit that old A458 highway and you and me, baby, we'll leave Rowley Regis behind."
Ordinarily, workwear revival would be the kind of thing this column applauds: smart, practical, well-designed, hard-wearing, etc. The problem is, designer workwear is an inherently daft concept, an alternate reality where ninnies pay hundreds of pounds for jeans that come "pre-stained" with oil.
The prime mover in the workwear revival is Adam Kimmel. There's nothing wrong with his engineer-style biker boots - they look like every other pair of engineer boots - but they cost $750 and were "inspired by Semina Culture": a must-have for Hells Angels who agonise that their footwear is insufficiently influenced by postwar California art movements. He also does "site pants" for $875. Wear them to a real building site and you're likely to get laughed at: not because they look bad - they don't - but you've just paid the best part of 600 quid for workmen's trousers and are therefore a bit of a mug.
