We're never over overalls: A brief history of overalls.

Hello Paper Dolls!

We recently got some great overalls in at the shop including the coveted Landlubber bell bottom version. Here's a little history on the overall:

 Overalls evolved from thigh-high gaiters known as "spatterdashes" or "kneecaps"; side-buttoning canvas or leather gaiters that covered almost all of the shoe in addition to most of the leg, that came into use about 1650. With the availability of cheap cotton in the 1800's, cotton canvas, duck, and denim replaced the linen canvas used in the overalls of the 1700's. Many, many local tailors and bulk manufacturers produced overalls and jumpers for working men all across America. The next development in the history of overalls would be the invention of "Levis" by adding copper rivets to the stress points of cotton duck overalls.

Over time, their baggy silhouette served as an emblem worn by railroaders and Depression-era farmers — as recalled in Grant Wood’s American Gothic. Later, they became emblematic of 1960s’ hippies, college students of the ‘70s, and even hip-hop and other recording artists, who wore them with one shoulder unfastened.

Landlubber was a jeans and denim label, started in 1964 by the Hoffman Corporation of Boston. During the early 1970s, they were THE cool jeans to wear, both their bellbottom jeans and cute jean dresses and skirts. The label was briefly relaunched in the early 1990s. Landlubbers, which were originally distributed to Army-Navy retail stores in unisex sizes, have been redesigned. They are no longer as low-rise and as hip-hugging. They are also not as wide at the bottom or the knee; none of that ''elephant bell'' look that represented the last evolution of the bell bottom in the late 1970's. Some styles even have pleated fronts.

Since the 1960s, different colors and patterns of bib overalls have been increasingly worn by young people of both sexes, often with one of the straps worn loose or unfastened along the side and under the arm. The bib overalls fashion trend among American youth culture peaked in the latter half of the 1970s, and again for females in the late 1990s.

Come down to the shop and grab a pair for yourself!