Carhartt has been making workwear since 1889. Hamilton Carhartt built the brand in Detroit for the people who needed clothing that could survive actual work, farmers, construction workers, anyone whose day involved conditions that would destroy a normal jacket inside a season.
That’s still what it is. The Detroit Jacket, the Double Knee, the Chore Coat in brown duck canvas, these are functional objects built to a standard that most clothing doesn’t attempt. They’re made to last and priced like they’re made to last and worn by people who need them to last.
Carhartt WIP is a different thing. Edwin Faeh started distributing original Carhartt in Europe in 1994 and then started modifying it, slimmer fits, updated colorways, a more fashion-forward construction. The WIP stands for Work In Progress, which tells you the orientation. It’s not about the work. It’s about the aesthetic language of the work, applied to something you’d wear to a show or a market or wherever.
Both are real. Both are Carhartt. They’re just not the same brand.
The gatekeeping thing
There’s a specific kind of person who sees someone in a WIP chore coat and feels compelled to point out that it’s not ‘real’ Carhartt. That the person wearing it has probably never been on a job site. That the original is for people who actually work.
This logic doesn’t hold up for a second. Nobody asks if you’ve actually run a marathon before buying running shoes. Nobody demands you prove agricultural credentials before wearing boots. The gatekeeping around workwear as a category is particularly strange because the whole point of workwear crossing into fashion is that the design is genuinely good, durable construction, practical details, shapes that hold up over time. Those qualities don’t require a job site to be worth something.
The original Carhartt is still exactly what it was. The existence of WIP doesn’t change that. This isn’t a competition.
WIP costs more than the original for the same reason any fashion brand costs more than its functional equivalent. You’re paying for design decisions that go beyond performance requirements. That’s a legitimate thing to spend money on or not spend money on depending on what you want. It’s not fraud.
What this actually looks like
If you need a jacket that will survive a Wisconsin winter on a job site, buy the original. If you want the visual language of workwear in a slimmer cut you can wear off the clock, buy the WIP. If you want both, buy both. The brands themselves clearly don’t have a problem coexisting.
The only people who have a problem with it are the ones who need clothing to mean something about who you are. And clothing can mean that, I think about this constantly with DMA*, but it doesn’t have to mean the same thing to everyone who wears it.
A Carhartt Detroit Jacket worn by someone who uses it for work and a Carhartt WIP Detroit Jacket worn by someone who just likes the shape are both valid. They’re just different relationships with the same object.
That’s true of most things, if you’re willing to let it be.