From jogging from city to worker blue, having class is a class ⬇️ support frustration ⬇️
Il vous est déjà peut-être arrivé, au cours de votre été, de croiser de jeunes cadres dynamiques à la barbe bien taillée porter des bleus de travail d’ouvriers BTP, version chics et raffinés. Le “bleu», ce vêtement de travail d’une seule pièce, composé d’une veste et d’un pantalon réunis et qui peut être de différentes couleurs, que l’on identifie visuellement le plus souvent en bleu, comme son nom l’indique. On en trouve le plus souvent dans certains quartiers gentrifiés (processus par lequel la population d’un quartier populaire fait place à une classe plus aisée en important aussi son mode de vie et de consommation) de grandes villes à boire des spritz en terrasse telles que Paris, Lyon ou encore Bordeaux. Moi-même je me suis surpris à penser intérieurement, un demi quart de seconde (à peine) : “han, pas mal du tout, ces bleus !». Peu de temps après avoir pris la mesure dramatique de cette pensée honteuse et refoulée, le bleu est devenu comme une obsession, j’ai commencé à en voir de plus en plus autour de moi, à chaque coin de rue : partout, tout le temps.
The French brand Soubacq manufactures haute couture work blues: “Each week, Louise, the founder, finds the fabrics of the big fashion houses to make you, in the heart of Paris, a very limited series in series.»205 euros The working blue is very limited, for an outfit initially carried by workers paid misery…
From the worker to the fashionista, there is only one step
"In 1904, a young girl from a good family, Mademoiselle Soubacq, fell from a beautiful worker, and thus discovered a new world.A world in blue of work that it makes its own, by adjusting, by taking up, taking care of this workers' uniform.Mademoiselle Soubacq ends up appropriating it by embroidering her name."When we consult their website, section" Our history ", the cultural and symbolic appropriation of the bourgeois on the prolo is surprisingly assumed, and made legitimate thanks to a little romantic story worthy of the beautiful and the clodo.And they are obviously not the only on this flourishing market.The famous brand Agnès B also surfs this worker hype, but also Jean-Paul Gaultier who on the occasion of his last parade after 50 years of career, wore a sea t-shirt and a blue work combination “because I amA worker, a craftsman, »he said in Paris Match.So hardworking that he is the best paid couturier this year, his fortune settled in millions of euros.An authentic first of rope.I am told that Gaultier himself is from a popular world and worker.Yes.Gérald Darmanin also.
Timothée, 32 ans et cadre dans le secteur de l’énergie, ne quitte que rarement son bleu de travail dans sa vie de tous les jours. Il peste contre cette récupération marketing par de grandes marques de mode qui les vendent à des prix outranciers : “Quand je vois des marques qui surfent sur la tendance et vendent des bleus de travail à plus de 100 balles, je trouve ça aberrant. Le principe même d’un bleu c’est le côté vintage, se dire qu’il a appartenu à quelqu’un, qu’on lui donne une seconde vie. En acheter un neuf c’est une infamie. C’est donc aberrant que des marques haut de gamme surfent sur cette tendance et sortent dans leur collection des bleus de travail tout neufs, pas du tout vintage, avec une empreinte carbone pas top, et en plus à un prix colossal, alors que les fripes débordent de bleus de travail d’occasion».
Selling second -hand clothing work blues is precisely the almost daily activity of Kriss.Brocketeur for four years, it's been a year that he has specialized in vintage work clothing from the 60s and 70s.He tells me that it is an increasingly difficult environment because evolving in a world market, driven in particular in Japan, and highly competitive: "It is so fashionable that some do that!".I found him at one of the sales he organizes certain Saturdays in Belleville (a Parisian district initially popular during gentrification today), at the "Les Folies" bar.
Installed on the terrace, he tells me the story of a democratized clothing at the end of the 19th century in French workers who would symbolize the industrial revolution (a period which made us switch a dominant agrarian and craft society towards a commercial society andindustrial) and the multiplication of new French factories located throughout the territory.The blue color (known as “indigo» or “purple blue», cheap at the time) of the jacket represents the working class and allows you to differentiate yourself from the jackets of chefs and bosses often gray or white and much less robust, even s'There are different colors of work blues, especially today.
Pour Kriss, le principal intérêt d’un tel vêtement est sa matière, appelée moleskine. Plutôt que de trouer le tissu et de brûler son propriétaire, elle permet aux morceaux de métal en fusion de glisser sur cette matière, protégeant ainsi les ouvriers au travail. Cela en fait un habit robuste et pratique dont sa couleur attrayante, au bel effet délavé, est rendue possible à force d’être lavé depuis de nombreuses années. “Cela fait deux ans et demi que j’en porte. Je voyais pas mal de bleus de travail chez mes amis scandinaves, et j’ai décidé de m’en acheter un à mon tour. Je suis allé chez Guerrisol (ndlr : friperie parisienne) et en cinq minutes, c’était réglé», me précise le jeune cadre Timothée, grand amateur de bleu.
The working blue, loss-making clothing for connected sub-covering?
Press attaché, employee of innovative start-ups, journalists, professions in digital marketing ... On average, consumers of work blues as a fashion object encountered or crossed are essentially-Bourgeois (transmission belt between the bourgeoisie, those who own, and the laborious class, those who work, which we have defined here) urban who live in neighborhoods which they gentrifies themselves: in Paris, in neighborhoods likeBelleville or Menilmontant, but also in cities such as Bordeaux or Nantes.This is what Kriss the second -hand dealer confirms to me: "Most of my consumers are still urban and thirty -something sores".Alexandre and Eloïse, aged 28 years old who work in the art and communication sector, illustrate it wonderfully.Crossed at the bend of a street near Ménilmontant (Parisian district particularly representative of this sociology of CSP+ urban), they find this “beautiful», “elegant» habit, and whose “good material» will have convinced them, after having noticed this fashion spread like a trail of powder around them a few months ago.They recognize that it may seem a bit “amazing», but that “it allows us to give life to clothes of the past and therefore to pay tribute to them in our own way», they justify.
Chic or frip, is it indecent to wear a working blue?"My grandmother would tell me that she did not want to see Blues of work carried by my grandfather in the house, that would remind her of the work and the suffering endured," admits Kriss.I asked José's opinion, the father of a friend.He has been working in the public works sector for 35 years, still dressed in his working blue.It was not "at all aware" that we wear this type of work clothing in everyday life and it makes it laugh, "Nothing is surprised today!", Without the "shock ourselves ».
When the bourgeoisie recovers a prolo garment, it becomes elegant and cool, as if by
"The deplorable working conditions of yesteryear are not the result of a garment, but of the capitalist system, there is therefore no paradox to find a beautiful garment even if people have suffered inside.Otherwise we would not put Jean, who was initially a product for underground minors, nor a trench coat which was for the military ... and no, no tribute or symbolism worker, for my part.It would still be very presumptuous to wear a clothes that we like by making believe that we are trying to get a social message across.But tribute to a past industrial world, of a garment made in France before globalization, that yes! ", Argues Timothy.Words that participate in the myth of a working class which would have almost disappeared today, which is completely false since the workers are even more numerous than the executives and still represent 20% of the population.As for the idea of a garment from an “industrial world passed», it quickly goes to work: many construction workers on construction sites obviously still carry work blues (rather gray in color ingeneral rule, specifies a knowledge in this sector), or even in most of the garages of our country.Even if working conditions have evolved since the 19th century, they remain difficult today, with many injured or deaths of work accident listed each week, and the devastators work laws 1 and 2 socialists who have once again doneRecall workers' law.But Timothy's remark is nonetheless relevant.We may not put Jean today, for example, if we reasoned only under this prism ...
In fashion history, work clothes from the working class that become new clothing trends is nothing new.The jeans were initially used by loggers and it is today completely democratized thanks to its fabric known for its resistance.We can also cite the fisherman's bob, used in the 90s and 80s by rappers in the United States and that we could see this summer appear on many trendy heads (yes, Parisians on vacation this summer in Marseille, we talk about you).Would the pragmatism and the utilitarian aspect of a garment not come at the origin of clothes from and initially carried by the laborious class?
Julie* was a supervisor in a renowned boarding school called “success», where students from working -class neighborhoods are placed in beautiful neighborhoods, for a year."When the boarding school settled, the bourgeois neighborhood saw the arrival of these young people with a bad eye.So that there is a better look, they have prohibited jogging.It was not official but everyone noticed it.Since last year, they have reinstated jogging because everyone is putting on it now, especially the children of Neuilly sur Seine!It was once the jogging fashion was recovered by the bourgeoisie that the establishment finally authorized it.They justified the recovery on the grounds that with EPS it is not practical because some students cannot change, but no one believed it.»
La marque de luxe Balenciaga vient également de sortir un sac Tati Barbès à carreaux, comme ceux du “bled», pour la somme de 1500 euros, tandis que le magasin Tati de Barbès, connu entre autres pour ses prix attractifs, fermera ses portes pour être remplacé par un hôtel (et d’autres choses du genre).Regardless of the 1500 euros an excessive hair, here is yet another example of the fact that as soon as the bourgeoisie puts its hand on a bag initially judged beauf and without taste, it turns into gold, as if by magic: that's it, having the monopolyBourgeois of (good) taste.But there may also be back and forth in fashion.At first, the Lacoste brand was used by relatively conservative elderly people, who shot when they saw that everyone was wearing their polo shirt in the French suburbs. Tandis qu’aujourd’hui, leurs égéries sont des rappeurs très populaires qui font la Une des Inrocks, comme le raconte très bien la journaliste Célia Sadaï dans Africultures en juillet 2020 (qui évoque dans son texte également l’engouement bourgeois pour des baskets Lidle) :»Un jour, quelqu’un m’a dit : « – Quand un Arabe conduit une smart, c’est qu’elle n’est plus à la mode."It made me think of the Lacoste polo shirt.In the 90s, the Lacoste polo shirt was very fashionable among racialized young people.We called it "a kosla".Me, I had bought a fake to an itinerant seller, for 10 francs, under the device of the ring road at the entrance to the chips of Clignancourt.The little crocodile, it was hyper semiotic in our eyes.He meant that we may have been poor, we had the class.He also meant that we belonged to hip-hop culture, since Lacoste was one of the favorite brands of our favorite rappers.In short, we had resered the crocodile in small community logo.I remember that the brand had complained, accusing us of being the source of a fall in sales (not to mention that for most of us, we wore imitations).For Lacoste, we degraded their brand image: the White Bourgeoisie Fentue de Tennis obviously did not want us to look like us.It was in the 90s, all that.Then there were the years 2010. Et avec son retard habituel de 20 ans, la bourgeoisie blanche s’est emparée de la culture hip-hop, déclaré jusqu’alors “sous-culture de cailleras».And the Lacoste brand has chosen to face the (very beautiful) rapper Moha la Squale (Editor's note: since September 2020, the singer has been accused of sexual assault and the brand has thus stopped collaboration.Célia Sadai's article was published before these accusations) This is the history of Arabic that leads a smart.There will always be a time when we buy a smart because it is an Arab who drives her.»
En d’autres termes, bourgeoisie et sous-bourgeoisie, en particulier blanche ici, récupèrent ces vêtements, les rendent par leur classe sociale dominante “portable» en société, et cela en devient naturellement une nouvelle distinction sociale… vis-à-vis de la classe laborieuse, chez qui porter un jogging est encore perçu comme un marqueur social péjoratif et excluant.Despite the use of the same garment by bourgeois and laborious, nothing helps: everyone always remains in their class.
The bourgeois then the sub-assiders who carry them love to divert things from their initial use.This is what is "cool", hence the attraction for suburban cultural objects, such as jogging or the Barbès bag.Having the choice to appropriate a culture that will never really be ours to be a little stylish, have the luxury of playing all the registers, having the assurance of never suffering the stigmata ... I wonder if the outfitof my father, stretcher bearer for over thirty years, will also one day be fashionable in several years and its material appreciated for what it is.Maybe I should already think about putting one or two aside, who knows. “La mode se démode, le style jamais», disait Coco Chanel.Does the laborious class have the monopoly of style and the bourgeoisie of a fashion that is permanently fueled by its thirst for renewal, coolness and discrepancy which makes it forget, the time of a purchase, the permanenceAnd the injustice of his social domination?
Selim derkaoui* The first name has been changed.
