Nineteenth century. Levi Strauss creates a garment suitable for miners: the overalls.
Overalls are practical and essential: pants with wide legs, surmounted by a bib straight by braces. They are the ultimate icon of proletarians.
Not by chance it’s the milestone of 60’: years of worker and students’ revolts, years of people’s.
If Levi Strauss created dungarees completely in denim, over time it has been revised in various fab- rics and patterns. The ongoing review allowed women to wear it on several occasions, away from the maternity wardrobe. Elegant, sensual, funny, and mischievous: the personality of the overalls emerges thanks to the various tissues used. Lace, leather, and velvet, linen: designers bold new forms, new structures, more mature lines, decreased amplitudes. The wide leg pants have become rigid skirts, shorts, skinny jeans; the eliminated bib and the linear braces enhance the sensual feminine neckline.
In 2009, Jaean Paul Gaultier, showed in his collection a pop: denim and jersey played on the light- ness of the overalls. Gualtier always chose it as the protagonist of the latest haute couture col- lection: pants are replaced by a wide chiffon skirt that embraces the “worker dress” in a princely world.
Sporty-chic for Akris, with romantic lace for Chanel, deconstructed for Ashish, ’90s style and hip hop influences for Steven Tai: various interpretations for a “worker’s dress”. An economic and practical garment has be- come a real ”must have”.
Combined with high heels, sneakers, clutch, hats, excessive accessories, overalls are loved by celebrities who opt, everyday for a unique and yet comfortable style.
From Rihanna to Jessica Alba: nobody resists overalls.
The recall is poignant: we are immersed in a real “Overalls revival”.
