When I was small, there was a TV series of train driver adventures with Casey Jones…he always wore a particular kind of cotton jacket with a distinctive woven stripe. You can see the effect on the cap that Casey wears on the stamp.
This was distinctively different from the bleu de travail worn by French railway workers.
A lot of people in design wear vintage style work wear – I do myself. Heavy duck dungarees, by Carhartt, and a WW2 submariner sweater from NSC, since you ask. I guess I am trying to pretend that sitting about all day watching old movies and reading magazines is real work…the new building at KX is on the railway lands site and the whole place has something of an enormous machine about it…a bit like the USS Enterprise; but steam powered, not WARP.
Back in the 1920s the Soviet designers of the avant-garde wore work wear and leather jackets to align themselves, as constructors, with the builders and factory-workers of the revolution…the association of workers and intellectuals was identified by left politics as providing a decisive force for change – brains and critical mass! Frustratingly, this class alliance has generally not been very effective or long-lasting.
The intellectuals take the view that jobs in the service of capital are exploitative and undignified; the workers proudly cling to their traditions and identity associated with their work and trades.