FEATURE
High fashion on the jobsite?
I AM convinced that the more-or-less wholesale adoption of workwear has done a lot to raise the profile of the trades. The reasons are obvious: self- employed tradespeople in particular look more professional, more competent and smarter as they have to work in and around clients’ homes.
Purpose-designed work clothes also look significantly better than a sloppy pair of tracksuit bottoms or jeans and a stained T-shirt - a look that was very common a few years ago on almost every worksite.
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With my own little stock of workwear I am particularly well sorted for the colder months. Warm socks and gloves, trousers made from slightly warmer materials and a wide array of fleeces and hoodies and even rainwear, mean that I can find something to cover most eventualities - and myself.
Even when the weather is warmer I tend to stick with long trousers as I seem to often be doing jobs that require me to kneel and my Snickers kneepad-enabled trousers are the best I have come across. The sight of my white legs may also have something to do with my choice…
He asked me if I was a tiler because he had observed that I was wearing kneepads in my trousers.
The trades would not have adopted workwear as wholeheartedly as they have done without very solid reasons for doing it, so let us not overlook the fact that there is so much excellent workwear on the market that is smart, practical, easy to care for and usually very comfortable because it is made in a bewildering array of sizes.
I will also never appear on the jobsite without safety shoes or trainers since I had a small incident with a plank falling on my toes.
Warm weather and it all goes to pot? Last week the weather here in Sussex crept past the magic 20°C mark. When I was in Wickes buying some materials, I observed that the clothing rules had definitely been relaxed.
The adoption of shorts is an obvious first response to warmer days and there were many kinds of shorts, including cut-off jeans on display. But there were also sloppy and stained T-shirts, non-safety trainers and general casual wear which, I am bound to say, took me back to the ‘bad old days’.
By PETER BRETT
I am aware that it is a smallish sample in a particular part of the country in a particular generalist builders’ outlet, but I risked looking like an idiot by entering into several conversations with some tradespeople. I think I might now have a new appreciation of why politicians find it difficult to interpret peoples’ points of view – every single person I spoke to had a coherent explanation for their choices of clothing and revealed fine delineations between various trades that made their choices sensible.
The first person I spoke to was from eastern Europe and he was smartly turned out in brand-matching shorts and T-shirt with clean work trainers. It turns out he was a carpenter and mostly worked indoors in private houses where appearance was very importance for his perceived levels of trust, quality of work and skill. In my view, he was someone who definitely appreciated that work clothing helps his image and therefore enables him to present well and gain further work by word of mouth.
It was interesting that he joined in the game a bit and asked me if I was a tiler because he had observed that I was wearing kneepads in my trousers. It certainly brought home to me that clothing definitely helps form our image.
Having had a response that confirmed my prejudices, I turned to a group of three guys who were loading a van with a range
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