It is on the 27th of March 1858 that the French sailor shirt (marinière) appeared, known for a while under the name of sailor suit. Before becoming the prestigious Frenchman’s T-shirt, the striped jersey was the official uniform for French sailors, to live aboard. Responding to precise criteria – 21 white stripes of 20 millimeters width side by side with 20 or 21 blue stripes of 10 millimeters width this time, it is made out of a stiff fabric and exclusively in a vivid optic white colour so as to stand out against the black sea in case of fall.
In 1900, the French sailor shirt became a piece of clothing for everybody, harpooning women and children first: the stripe is then used for bathing suits. And, as of 1910, it became suitable for the fashion circles, through Gabrielle Chanel. Bored to see the women dressed up as dolls and with unuseful accessories and arrays, she decided to take a leaf out of the Deauville’s sailor suits, to free women from the weight of the society dictum. Playing on the androgynous side, the casual striped cotton styles became very attractive and so desired, even in Paris.
We will have to wait the summer of 1962 to discover a new way to fashion it through Yves St Laurent. Within his hands, it became stylish, being transformed into a pullover-dress or being trimmed with sequins. It is the decade in which we saw Bardot parading with it while walking along St Tropez’ lanes and Picasso who could not take it off. But the real consecration came from the movie “L’effrontée” in which Charlotte Gainsbourg is totally filled with this garment.
In the 80’s, it is revisited again by Jean Paul Gaultier who erase totally the hangover from Chanel : he widened the stripes patterns and selected heavier fabrics. More masculine, more graphic and more creative, it brought a breath of fresh air to an era which sounded baroque. Over his collections, the designer could not stop revisiting and readapting it – via feathers’ striped dresses, blue and red stripes, pulling it up to the “must-have” charts.
Since then, the French sailor shirt is more than a style, it is an icon. Offered in a wide range of forms and materials, it seems to go through eternity with genius and fits anyone: the good child but also the cheeky or stubborn one, the temptress woman, the soberly desirable one. Its unconscious mimicry makes the French sailor shirt be the ideal garment for the Biarritz, Paris or Monte-Carlo ramblers, easily getting over the social barriers.
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