No category is more synonymous with classic American style than workwear, but there’s nothing past-tense about the best workwear brands on the market. From Jeremy Allen White’s daily strolls in various broken-in cottons to Daniel Day-Lewis’s continued devotion to Carhartt, the genre is as reliable and flattering today as it’s ever been before.
And while many of the names spotlighted below manufacture their products in the United States—L.C. King in Bristol, Tennessee; Stan Ray in Crockett, Texas; to name just two sterling examples—some of the raddest American-inspired workwear at the moment comes from Australia, Canada, Japan, and beyond.
So to help you find the chore jacket that’ll last you a lifetime (or the carpenter pants your grandkids will fish out of your attic), GQ Recommends went deep on the category’s biggest, brightest stars, from the century-old stalwarts to the upstart one-man operations. Their provenance may span multiple continents, and some might paint further outside of the lines than others, but what all of them share is a commitment to their craft. Expect high-quality construction, durable materials, and functionality galore.
The Best Workwear Brands, According to GQ
- The Heritage Stalwarts: Carhartt, Dickies, RefrigiWear, Stan Ray, Ben Davis, L.C. King
- The Young Americans: Wallace & Barnes, Randy’s Garments, Freenote Cloth
- The Indie Favorites: James Coward, Henry’s, MAN-TLE, Rosa Rugosa
- The Regional Specialists: Nigel Cabourn, Post O’Alls, Arpenteur, Graziano and Gutierrez
- The Giants of Yesteryear: Big Mac, OshKosh B’gosh, Red Kap, Sears, Penney’s
The Heritage Stalwarts
Carhartt
In 1889, Hamilton “Ham” Carhartt began making bib overalls with a pair of sewing machines in his Detroit loft. That became a line of sturdy outfits for railroad workers, and soon the brand was expanding across the country and into Canada, hawking coveralls and jungle suits to soldiers during both World Wars—and a growing number of tough-wearing garments for factory workers in the decades that followed. Today, Carhartt is popular among creative director types and movie stars alike, but it’s still favored by manual laborers across the nation who appreciate its comfort, durability, and style chops. Its legendary duck canvas jackets are virtually indestructible, warm as hell, and also look pretty great. Its beanies and five-panel hats make great accessories, and for what it’s worth, the brand still makes those overalls, too.
Dickies
Dickies is another workwear icon that started with a pair of overalls, this time in Texas back in 1922. It still makes those overalls today, but also work pants and work shirts, sturdy cargo shorts, heavyweight long-sleeve tees, and the excellent insulated Eisenhower jacket. A truly accessible-to-all brand thanks to its extensive sizing and affordable prices, Dickies embraces anyone who wishes to join the family, sponsoring its own skate team after skaters adopted its rugged 874 chinos in the ‘80s and ’90s, and even starting a fresh conversation in recent years with the army of Gen-Zers who’ve now discovered its fairly-priced, rock-solid designs.
RefrigiWear
It’s all there in the name with RefrigiWear, the outfitter that grocery store workers rely on during their trips into the deep freeze. The brand has been making insanely warm, surprisingly affordable outerwear since the ’50s, for everyone from Alaskan pipeline workers to obsessive hockey dads who spend too much time at the rink. It’s also found a following among style obsessives in recent years, ever since releasing its now-coveted collaboration with Supreme.
Stan Ray
Back in 1972, Earl Beard started Stan Ray with a simple goal: to make clothes in the USA—beginning with painter and carpenter pants—that were durable and would last for years. Little has changed today: The company’s now in the hands of the fourth generation of Beards, and those painter pants—relaxed fit, tough-as-nails, and still made in Texas—have barely changed in the time since. They can easily be found at boutiques the world over, but the brand also makes a selection of characteristically excellent shorts, work jackets, and totes.
Ben Davis
Ben Davis’s story begins with rivets. In the 1870s, Jacob Davis, a grandfather of the brand’s founder, began adding those circular mechanical fasteners to his work pants, after a woman complained that her husband’s trousers kept falling apart at the seams. The idea was so groundbreaking that Jacob went on to oversee production of riveted blue jeans for a little outfit out of San Francisco called Levi Strauss; in 1935, his grandson Ben decided to carry on his grandfather’s legacy by launching his own label. Today, Ben Davis makes work shirts, jackets, coveralls, pants—including the wide-leg Gorilla Cut—in a feast of shades and sizes.
L.C. King
Since 1913, Bristol, Tennessee’s L.C. King has been making barn coats for farmers, real life Yellowstone cowboys, and workwear enthusiasts alike. As the story goes, in the early 20th century, Appalachian bird dog raiser Landon Clayton King was looking for a barn coat strong enough for days tracking quail on his farm, eventually launching his own company to do just that. Today, the ethos remains the same, but the coat itself was stripped down and rebuilt from scratch in recent years. Now made from 12 oz. cotton duck canvas from Mount Vernon Mills in Trion, Georgia, the result is a functional, warm, and stylish coat for both farm work and city play. Come for the barn coat—denim and Landon brown are especially nice—and stay for the five-pocket jeans, Western shirts, and trucker caps.
The Young Americans
Wallace & Barnes
Wallace & Barnes began as a wildly successful J.Crew capsule collection in 2011. Made up of workwear items inspired by the vintage pieces designer Frank Muytjens and his team sourced as part of their work for the main line, it’s since become J.Crew’s premium workwear sub-label, with sales holding strong even through the brand’s turmoil in the late 2010s. The current collection includes creased selvedge denim jeans, Italian suede work jackets, boatbuilding-inspired knits, work coats, and overalls.
Randy’s Garments
Randy’s Garments is that rare maker of traditional workwear that’s both affordable and available through higher-end stockists like Mr. Porter. Designed, cut, and sewn entirely in New York City’s garment district, Randy’s focuses on quality basics like work shirts and pants, ripstop service jackets, and cotton-jersey pocket tees, though its (typically sold-out) heavyweight hoodies give even the likes of Camber a run for their money.
Freenote Cloth
A relative newcomer to the workwear space, this San Juan Capistrano, California-based brand is nevertheless deeply influenced by classic Americana. It focuses simply but effectively on sourcing quality materials, and monitoring the manufacturing process from start to finish. We especially dig Freenote’s impressive denim line, which comes in five different cuts with an emphasis on thick dark indigo sourced from Japan, but the classic waxed cotton and goatskin jackets are also worth a look. And if you’re thinking about becoming a hat guy, check out Freenote’s collections with Bowman Hat Co. and Hampui.
The Indie Favorites
James Coward
Vancouver-based James Coward delivers a decidedly modern take on traditional workwear. Like many of the brands on this list, there’s a serious commitment to excellent construction buoyed by relationships with the best fabric mills in the world. You likely won’t be wearing the brand’s linen workshop shirt (nearly $300) in an actual workshop—ditto its gorgeous made-in-Japan Ganz jacket ($478)—and that’s totally cool. These are clothes for serious menswear fanatics with an appreciation for craft, history, and a very 2024 merging of the two.
Henry’s
Henry’s is another Canadian upstart, a literal one-man shop based in Toronto. That man is Keith Henry, the brand’s owner, operator, pattern-maker, tailor, and photographer. His mom taught him the basics of sewing at 13, and after years of hand-stitching pants for himself and his friends, he launched his namesake label with a focus on high-grade fabrics, relaxed fits, and thoughtful design details, like his distinctive rounded front pockets. He makes every single garment himself, one at a time, in highly limited quantities: a couple of vintage inspired jackets, some straightforward trousers, a pair of vintage 501 reproductions. Which helps explain the brand’s appeal—each piece is quite literally one of a kind.
MAN-TLE
Down in the Southern Hemisphere, Aussies Aida Kim and Larz Harry are putting their own spin on traditional workwear. The husband and wife team met in Tokyo while they were both working with Comme des Garçons, eventually launching MAN-TLE in 2015. MAN-TLE’s durable canvas pants, shirt-jackets, densely-knit wool sweaters—typically crafted from intricate, hard-to-find fabrics sourced from family-run factories in Japan—are designed to adapt to their wearer’s body over time, aging like a top-shelf sherry.
Rosa Rugosa
Rosa Rugosa was founded in Toronto in 2017 by Matty Matheson (of The Bear fame) and designer Ray Natale. The pair had long worked in industries that required quality trade garments, and when they noticed a dearth of foundational Canadian workwear brands they decided launch their own. They first partnered with a local factory that could expertly produce heavy-weight, double stitched cotton garments, but when it shuttered during the pandemic, the owners agreed to sell all of their sewing equipment to the brand. Rosa Rugosa now oversees the entire production process, hawking functional chore coats in 15 oz. duck canvas, polyester-cotton blend two-pocket shirts, and classic, work-ready pants and shorts in a range of hardy canvases and twills.
The Regional Specialists
Nigel Cabourn
Brit Nigel Cabourn is an icon of rugged clothing design. He’s been in the business for more than 40 years, producing collections influenced by vintage military, outdoor, and workwear garments alike, while also launching successful collaborations with Sunspel and The Armoury. The current line, made up of top-quality garments in mostly army green and navy, includes your traditional workwear riffs mixed in with some fun pieces that also have a rich history—old-timey baseball shirts, jackets that fuse a military lining with kimono collar, and reversible hemp-cotton hiking pants.
Post O’Alls
Once referred to as the “wizard of workwear”, Japanese designer Takeshi Ohfuchi’s passion for vintage American workwear from the 1920s and ’30s is the fuel that powers his brand. (Ohfuchi credits that era’s fusion of old world craftsmanship and the dawn of the Machine Age with yielding many of the greatest workwear designs.) He launched Post O’Alls in 1993, starting with a railroad jacket that he still makes today, along with a line of hunting vests in funky fabrics like taffeta and deadstock quilts, and, of course, plenty of canvas overalls.
Arpenteur
When Mark Asseily and Laurent Bourven launched Arpenteur (“surveyor” in French) in Lyon in 2011, the goal was to honor the traditions of French workwear while incorporating contemporary cuts and finishes. Garments are made in France using local fabrics, yielding a line of quality basics with a twist—a relaxed fit tee with overlocked edges on the cuff and hemline; a short cut jacket made with cotton, linen and silk taffetas; four-pocket trousers hand soaked in a woad dye bath; and hiking shoes made exclusively for Arpenteur by Paraboot.
Graziano & Gutierrez
Founded by Alejandro Gutierrez and Samuel Graziano, this Mexican-American workwear brand works with textile makers in Oaxaca and Chiapas—focusing on collaborative and socially conscious production practices—and completes its garments in Oregon. Some of the hand-made fabrics it selects are traditionally used for upholstery and tablecloths, but the brand repurposes them into American workwear-inspired clothes: pedal-loomed camp and work shirts; made-to order chore jackets; indigo denim carpenter pants; and a few sweet screen-printed tees.
The Giants of Yesteryear
Big Mac
JCPenney launched Big Mac in 1922, which remained the company’s oldest active private brand until it shuttered. Today, the brand lives on in vintage stores and on websites like eBay, Etsy, and Grailed. You can almost smell the diesel and grease on the brand’s line of work shirts, overalls, and carpenter jeans from the 1950s to ’70s.
OshKosh B’gosh
These days, Wisconsin’s OshKosh B’gosh is best known for its bibbed children’s overalls. But the brand dates back to 1895, when it first began producing hickory stripe overalls under the name Grove Manufacturing Company. By 1984, 80 percent of its sales came from children’s clothing, but vintage heads scour eBay for vintage OshKosh flannel shirts, lined denim chore coats, and jeans.
Red Kap
Red Kap has been making wallet-friendly workwear for actual working people since 1923. It began with shirts and overalls, shifted focus to manufacturing supplies for the army during the second World War, then pivoted toward the industrial laundry industry. The brand’s most significant period of expansion was from the 1960s through the 1980s, and that’s the era that produced Red Cap’s most coveted vintage items, including its cropped mechanics jackets. You’re likely to find a company logo badge (Ford, Exxon) or a random dude’s name stitched on one of those, but that’s perfect if you’re going for a peak grunge look.
Sears
Sears began as a small mail-order retailer, opened its first department store in Chicago in 1925, and within five years was operating 300 locations across the country. Then, in 2018, America’s one-time largest retailer collapsed. Thankfully, many of the mass merchandiser’s workwear items are still available on secondhand sites, and when you find a good one, you can see why the company was so popular for so long. Its work, barn, and hunting jackets are well-constructed workhorses, and its 1960s-era denim jackets give vintage Levi’s a run for their money.
Penney’s
While Big Mac was JCPenney’s best known workwear line, the retailer actually operated a few over the years. As a result, work shirts from the Penney’s Men’s Shop, Pay Day overalls, and Foremost—all brands under its umbrella at one point—are widely available online, and remain popular among in-the-know crate diggers. Etsy, in particular, has a nice selection of Penney’s workwear pieces dating back to the 1950s.
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