The Chequered History of Stripes
You may have noticed we have a slight obsession with stripes, there’s something inherently anti-establishment about them which appeals to us, and in this post we explore the roots of this. Once known as the Devil’s cloth, striped garments have a long history of being assigned to outsiders, and were even considered sacrilegious in 1295 when Pope Boniface VIII banned all religious orders from wearing it.
The optical impact of stripes makes them visually striking and hard to ignore and as such they have been used to distinguish undesirables since the middle ages. From prostitutes, lepers and cripples to condemned people - stripes signalled a warning and ensured their segregation from society, even striped animals were viewed with suspicion and seen as Satan’s beasts. Society tends to be fearful of those who reject convention and striped garments were legally enforced on ‘outcasts’ in the 13th century.
The bold pattern transgressed the bounderies of orderly society which made them appealing to circus performers who adopted them for characters of a sinister nature giving them a deviant undertone which persists to this day. The Cheshire Cat from Alice on Wonderland, written by Lewis Carrol in 1865, is a great example of how stripes highlighted its mischievous nature and acts as a warning to the otherworldly character.
In more recent times it has been associated to the penitentiary system, and the prison stripe can be traced by to Auburn Prison System in New York, 1820. The stripes were representative of the prison bars and would make the wearer instantly recognisable if escaped. It was in 1953 in the seminal movie ‘The Wild One’ when the main antagonist ‘Chino”, leader of a notorious motorcycle gang, wore a prison striped jersey that they became entombed in subcultural fashions ever since. At a time when a t-shirt was considered provocative dress, wearing prison garments in public would be making a huge statement. As a free man yet still wearing his prison garments Chino subverted the garment, making it a thing of power and intimidation rather than oppression. Taking the power back from tools of oppressors is a recurring theme in subcultures, and the clothing forced upon society’s outlaws became a symbol of resistance. It is no surprise then that stripes figure so heavily in the DIY style of Punk fashions where the intention was to disrupt and distinguish themselves from societies norms.
Not all stripes have been tarred with the same connotations and in the 18th century as design was moving from more ornate to neo-classical styles stripes made a reappearance, firstly in interior textiles and later in fashion. The stripes that were trending however were vertical and thin so to create a clear distinction from the wide horizontal stripes. The narrow vertical stripes became known as ‘pinstripe’ and typified the suiting of city bankers.
The French Navy launched the ‘Mariniere’ their iconic naval uniform made up of 21 thin horizontal stripes which denoted the 21 victories of Napoleon. This began to change the perception around stripes and turned them into an enduring classic style with an element of Europeon Chic. Later in 1917 Coco Channel took inspiration from naval uniforms for her collection that year, which cemented stripes in to the world of fashion.
It was the ‘swinging sixties’ where stripes really came to prevail in the Mod fashions and Optical art of the time. These designs weren’t the traditional stripes that many of the previous garments employed, rather they turned the regimented lines into optical illusions that easily provoked the older symbolism of stripes: disturbance. The styles resonated with the counter-cultures at the time, for those that wanted to break away from traditional ideologies, and have done ever since with hippies, punks and grunge styles.
Motorcyclists have commonly been perceived as outlaws, the brutal, often obnoxious and inherently dangerous machines appealing to those thrill seekers on the edges of society. It seems only natural then that they have adopted the stripes as part of their cultural identity. Our striped flat tracker shirts are a direct inspiration from the original prison striped shirt worn by Chino in ‘The Wild One’ and our new range of Knitwear goes to develop the theme further. Whilst the prison stripe has become ubiquitous in motorcycle clothing of late, we have aimed to create the highest quality versions available, creating our own cotton pique fabrics or working with the finest Yorkshire Wools and UK production.