Collection: Women's Carhartt WIP

Detroit, 1889. Hamilton Carhartt starts with two sewing machines and five workers, stitching workwear for railroad men under the motto Honest value for an honest dollar. Overalls, jackets, trousers with double knees: things whose only job was to outlast the person wearing them. Exactly a hundred years later, in 1989, Swiss businessman Edwin Faeh begins bringing American goods to Europe under the All American Concept banner, and Carhartt comes along. The timing is perfect. In the early 1990s, the rugged workwear with the yellow C is adopted by rappers, graffiti writers and corner boys, because it lasts and pretends nothing. In 1994, Faeh founds Work In Progress as the exclusive European distributor; a year later Carhartt appears in Kassovitz’s film La Haine, and in 1996 WIP obtains the licence to produce its own collections outside the US. The first shop opens in 1997 on Neal Street in London, and the same year brings branded skate and BMX teams. Since then, Carhartt WIP has done one thing, and done it properly: it takes Detroit workwear archetypes — the Detroit Jacket, Double Knee, Michigan Coat — gently re-cuts them and lets them live in the cultures that chose them. Detroit and Berlin techno, skateboarding from Paris to Seoul, contemporary art galleries. Clothing built for the factory that the street claimed so thoroughly nobody asks any more where work ends and style begins. Work In Progress: the name is the programme, and the work never stops.