“I like the feel of ‘em. I buy them at my local hardware store,” Sean Penn said of his classic mud-colored Carhartt work jacket one night at San Francisco’s Tosca Cafe, when I mustered the courage to go up and talk to him.
“In fact, Carhartt sent a whole batch of jackets for crew gifts after we shot Into the Wild, since Vince Vaughn wore them in every scene.”
“Cool,” I said, feeling myself starting to sweat.
Some women prefer a man put together in a well-tailored suit or at best, fitted jeans and maybe a well-cut shirt to subtly show off toned arms – think Daniel Craig as James Bond. But not me. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a sucker for a guy in Carhartt work pants.
It conjures up the ideal of a capable, strong man of yore. One who works hard and lives by his wits – not stuck in a cubicle or glued to his phone, staring blankly at his Instagram feed.
Growing up, this was Kris Kristofferson driving a big rig in Convoy, Sam Elliott wrenching on his motorcycle in Mask, or Steve McQueen’s don’t-mess-with-me competence in Bullitt and the Great Escape. Handy, heroic and confident, these men had a masculinity that was old school.
So it is with the no-frills, mud-brown or black Carhartts, the uniform of masculine self-sufficiency.
You can drive around any city or town across the country – from San Francisco to New York or Colorado Springs to Gainesville and see this old-school, unassuming masculinity in action: workmen scrambling on a roof, hanging from a bucket to fix a downed power line, or driving big machinery to lay down new blacktop.
All of them dressed identically in ubiquitous mud-brown pants with tool belts around their waists and a hammer hanging in place on their thigh. Tall or short, fat or thin, their work pants – their Carhartts – transform them into men of steel, or at least the most manly, capable, and yes, enticing sight where you would least expect it.
Then there’s the “Carhartt curve”, as I have called it. A magical and I’m sure unintended design feat by the brand that makes every man’s back half a molded work of art. I am mesmerized by a man in Carhartts. It’s as if the pants radiate a magical pull. And they have the hammer loop, which is basically a little piece of cloth that lets you know: “I have a hammer in my pants and I know how to use it.”
Surely, Hamilton Carhartt, the company’s founder, definitely didn’t have the beloved “curve” in mind when he founded the company in 1889 in Dearborn, Michigan. The company has a long history of outfitting men doing manly things, from providing uniforms in the first and second world war through outfitting workers on the construction of the Alaskan pipeline in the 1970s.
Lest you think I’m crazy, I’m aware that these pants do serve a purpose other than in my fantasies.
“I’m glad I had my bibs on – the wind was insane,” said a friend recently of his job tied in a few hundred feet off the ground servicing cellphone towers in Wyoming, where gusts can reach 50 or 60 mph. Guys like him wear Carhartts because the stiff material – heavyweight 100% cotton duck that repels wind and water is indestructible on jobsites, in shops or riding a motorcycle, anyplace guys are doing something that involves tools and/or a motor.
And, did I mention, that men in Carhartts can be very charming, as one was years later at a New York Starbucks at 53rd and Madison, where my mother and I stopped after some shopping?
It was there that amid the crowded tables and window seats of shoppers, tourists, and laptops, two construction guys came striding in in their mud-brown Carhartt coveralls. One of them caught my trying-to-be-subtle side-eye as he poured cream into his coffee. He was short, but powerfully built, bald and had the bluest eyes.
He walked over and stopped right in front of me.
“Hey, I don’t mean any disrespect, but you’re a beautiful woman,” he said. My mother rolled her eyes.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said to her. “You seem like nice ladies.” He winked at me. “I’m working a couple blocks up Madison,” he said. “If you have a minute, I’d love to talk to you. Ask for Steve.”
So I did.
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