How did overalls and jumpsuits went from male work clothe to female fashion without becoming "male fashion" ?

Ziggurat@sh.itjust.works to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 98 points –

This is kinda stupid, and just for "culture" but I sometimes see women wearing overall or jumpsuit are fashion accessories, but when male do so it's professional clothe (and sometimes sport clothe).

It's seems that if a man over 10 year old wear an overall of a jumpsuit it's a professional attire rather than a fashion thing. I am not really sure on why it totally skip the "male fashion step" ? I get that the "plumber overall" isn't really that of a dream, but a pilot jumpsuit seems like many men's dream job.

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Are you just trying to make actual sense out of fashion? Good luck.

You missed the phase in the 90's when overalls were cool. Chris Cross gonna make you jump. And wear overalls. I think House of Pain wore them too.

It was indeed Afro-American fashion in the 90s. The Fresh Prince of Bel-air is another famous example.

In the latter half of the 90s it was popular with young people in general

Overalls are still pretty big in the fat, shirtless redneck crowd.

Depending on where you live, it’s absolutely male fashion. My dad wore overalls over a plain flannel almost exclusively.

It's work safety attire. When men wear it it's "why are you wearing those work clothes" women can wear them because no one will assume they're work clothes because women don't (normally/traditionally) do those jobs.

In the same way that men don't wear suits in a casual setting they don't wear other work attire in a casual setting.

Generally if women wear something, men will avoid it to not appear affeminate. Increasingly so throughout history as fashion is incorporated into gender roles.

The exception being jeans!

Jeans are somehow on a completely different plain of existence. They've been somewhat fashionable for decades and all in all, haven't changed that much. They got tighter and wider, higher and lower, but still more or less the same.

Not sure if you noticed women's pants are significantly tighter and more form fitting than men's. They also tend to be thinner and stretchier to accommodate, and therefore usually wear out faster and are not as good in cold weather.

For a guy, it wasn't a new fashion. The women are going through pocket overcompensation. Next, they'll be in JNCO jeans.

I'm going to say that somewhere between guys not wanting to wear their work clothes outside of work, and the outfits being a major symbol of workers during the time the IWW were being demonized (the IWW being the "International Workers of The World" an global socialist workers rights union) - baby clothes became a thing.

Overalls and jumpsuits and softer forms of them are easy to put on babies (due to being one garment)... Cartoons even sometimes depicted them as having a poop-flap at the back for toilet training.

So men were being told not to wear them, babies were wearing them, and they were being used as a political symbol of international communism and "lowly" blue collar work like mining or steel work.

... however women, would later (within our youth obsessed culture) want to look cute and young, and at other points in time, wanted to be seen as viable and capable workers... And women were already in the habit of borrowing fashions from men.

Thus there were cultural rejection factors for men, and cultural attraction factors for women.

A woman can put a tshirt on, some overalls and a scarf around her hair and indicate she is painting her apartment - the look thus had a social broadcasting function "I'm doing labour". If a man does this, he may well look like a garbage man, or a child in a romper suit. Male labour is now represented by more modern safety equipment, like ear and eye protection, or boots and gloves (perhaps due to harsher forms of work).

So the symbol for women of repaint and repair also transferred to television, and from there, the "look" carried popularity for social signalling, as well as started to become somewhat of a queer aesthetic for self-activated and hence partially "masculinized" women, such as lesbians, activists, hikers or environmentalists, and "independent" women, who are "doing it for themselves".

Oh, also, some women would have had access to overalls as part of fulfilling factory work roles during WW2 when male labour was absent.

Due to having to mostly return to their "normal" lives afterwards, this may have given the social period when less men were around to be wary of or tell them what to do, a magical quality of independence.

Some of that magic of female independence may have washed off onto the factory workers uniform: The Overalls.

Are comfy versions of overalls and jumpsuits even made for men? I just assume manufacturers make men's work wear and women's fashion versions and skip out on their counterparts.

Follow up question: How are overalls/jumpsuit even remotely practical,especially for women who don't pee standing up mostly - and especially in the US with its legendary public toilet doors?

As a man I simply don't get it.

Oh yeah the decision of whether to practically strip naked in the Walmart bathroom is a hard one, especially considering the higher likelihood that someone is attempting to covertly film me. You can also attempt to shift one side of the crotch to the side enough, but then you're risking getting piss all over your clothes if you don't do it well enough.

I'm guessing it's because parents also dress their kids in denim overalls (because kids are messy), leading to some kids growing up to experience wearing them. Girls like the "vintage" style of kid's clothes at least as far as high school, at which point they can become a nostalgic choice.

Not a lot of people wear their uniform as high fashion unless it's one that carries an inherent prestige