Courtesy of Saint JamesĪpart from being called the Breton, the striped sailor jersey has earned many names over the years, including la marinière (the sailor), le pull marin (the sailor sweater), tricot rayé (the striped knit), and le chandail, which today translates literally as ‘sweater’. ![]() Tricots-Saint James advert from the 1970s. For Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief, costume designer Edith Head made Cary Grant look suave and just a little outré in her adaptation of a grey striped Breton topped off with a dotted kerchief. The always-gamine Audrey Hepburn was frequently captured wearing the flattering sailor tee Brigitte Bardot artfully lounged in the nautical stripes and Marcel Marceau’s mime, Bip, was never seen without his skin-tight version of the sailor suit. Breton stripes graced movie screens and became synonymous with the time. French cinema, buoyed by the New Wave – Nouvelle Vague – embraced the sailor look wholeheartedly. In the ’50s and ’60s the striped shirt was popularised by the Beatnik counter-culture. They took the Breton and paired it with rolled-up jeans. The image of the sailor as footloose and free mixed well with the bohemian vibe of the time. Kids didn’t want to be stuck in their parents’ age – it was their time to be modern. The Breton stripe was a big hit in the post-war 1950sĪfter World War II a huge generation gap developed. When rationing finally ended there were more goods in the shops and the hitherto-unheard-of teenager had buying options. In 1952 renowned photographer Robert Doisneau captured the great iconoclast wearing his Breton shirt while working for his daily bread. Pastoureau states in his book that a nonconformist zebra like Picasso never missed an opportunity to exhibit himself in stripes. However, it wasn’t long before the sailor shirt was seen on avant-garde figures like Jean Cocteau and Pablo Picasso. Her Breton was stylish, expensive and for the time an excellent example of trickle-up fashion – trends from the street or working class taken over by the affluent. Chanel is credited in saying, “Luxury must be comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury.” By borrowing from la marinière, Coco heralded an androgynous image of female independence and freedom.Ĭhanel’s practical, jersey-knit separates soon found themselves in the lexicon of urban chic. Her ‘garçonne look’ – a modification of contemporary menswear patterns for the female form – was seen on women now happily liberated from the heavily corseted fashion of the Belle Époque. Taken with their look, Chanel adapted a short smock-like marinière for her 1917 couture collection. During the Great War, Chanel watched the fishermen in their sailor-inspired Bretons at work along the coast near Deauville. ![]() This masculine freedom was not lost on the innovative designer Coco Chanel freedom of the female form was something that compelled her. ![]() Even today those officers who once toiled through the ranks in their blue and white stripes instead of graduating unscathed from naval academies are labelled by other officers as zebras. The stripes relegated those who wore it to the bottom of the ship’s hierarchy and soon negative connotations ensued. After the decree, the striped look was worn only by the crew and quartermasters, not officers. Up until Hamelin’s 1858 ruling, regulations for the naval uniform applied only to the officers sailors boarded their assigned ships in their own rag-tag clothes. Whether the stripes came about from pride or practicality the contrasting colours made the unfortunate men who had fallen overboard much easier to spot in the waves. The ability to knit in the round meant the Breton could be woven into a snug, seamless tube – free from buttons, seafarers wearing the sweater wouldn’t get snagged on the rigging or fishing nets. The alternating bands probably originated because technical innovations in the 19th century simply made the knitting of stripes easier. Penned by Admiral Hamelin, the Minister of Marine in 1858, the official bulletin of the French Navy stated, “The body of the shirt will count twenty-one white stripes, each twice as wide as the twenty to twenty-one indigo blue stripes.” Mid-1800s France was still a proud naval power under Napoleon III and rumour has it that the stripes’ numbers represented each one of his Uncle Bonaparte’s sea victories over the British. The ever-present blue and white stripes are due to an act of French Parliament decreeing that the striped knit or tricot rayé become part of the uniform for all naval seamen based in Brittany.
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