By Tom Gierasimczuk
The flannel shirt. Along with nature, the sun, and perhaps the bible, few icons of humanity’s existence have survived as long as this torso-warmer. The plaid flannel shirt has been the duke of the fashion monarchy. Its reign has been proud; uninterrupted; supreme.
However, as the summer fashion season approaches, I fear for the plaid prince. His simple features (the collar, two pockets and a whole lot of love) are being corrupted. Greedy designers and equally-greedy fashion freaks are bastardizing this once-simple, honoured piece of soft, supple serenity. The plaid shirt is being cut, sliced and biochemically-altered to grow hoods, zippers and other unsightly limbs. This horror must stop. The flannel shirt was created to be only a shirt; two pockets and seven buttons. That’s it.
Today, although the basic plaid shirt is still very visible, various mutations have been finding their way into retail outlets everywhere. For this reason, I feel an extensive historical analysis of the evolution of the plaid flannel is absolutely necessary. As a service to plaid-shirt purists everywhere, I decided to trace the evolutionary steps taken by the early plaid shirt amoeba and its subsequent path along the building blocks of plaid. By learning about its history, we can help preserve this endangered mecca of material. From its swarthy origins in the deep forests of Scotland, to its recent adoption in Seattle and its current popularity with anyone claiming to be all that is grunge, the plaid shirt, like a pillar of strength, has stood the test of time.
The first documented traces of the “plaid shirt” are actually not shirts at all but kilts. The kilts, worn by Scottish armies, were warm and practical for treks and just plain damn sexy. The early Scottish kilt influence can still be seen today, adopted by celebrities like Courtney Love and anyone else attempting to duplicate that oh-so-fashionable “school girl look.”
The Scottish migration to the New World sowed the seeds that would eventually reap the plaid shirt. A large majority of Scotts became lumberjacks in Canada and the United States. Having brought over their native tartan skirts and finding the material suitable for kilts, the poorer Scottish immigrants began converting the kilts to shirts, thus protecting themselves against the frigid environment of their new land.
The tartan jackets soon gained popularity and became the essential outwear for loggers and general outdoor-types. Since the thick shirt was designed for Scottish lumberjacks, it received the name “lumberjack shirt.” From this design, the thick tartan jacket was altered to be worn as a thinner, indoor shirt and especially so fans could look really cool for Pearl Jam’s 1874 British Colony Tour.
The thin, lighter version of the lumberjack jacket spawned the use of more cotton for increased comfort to eliminate the frequent chapping that resulted with tartan overuse. The bastard child of this fusion was a prototype for today’s plaid shirt.
The plaid shirt, stylistically, stayed within the lumberjack community well into the early 1950’s. The plaid shirt’s commercial break came with Wally Cleaver’s adoption of flannel for his TV show. With Wally’s fellow actor and show bad-ass, Eddie Haskall quickly biting his friend’s style, the plaid shirt was launched on a new course. Haskall’s crazy antics while smothered in flannel gave a nation of viewers the perpetual notion that plaid means bad. The repercussions of this mammoth event are still visible today. From gang members to alterno-grungers, the one common element that exists is the preference for plaid and its “I-don’t-care-because-I’m-a-bad-ass-in-flannel” connotations.
Flannel stayed relatively event-free throughout the ’60’s, ’70’s and ’80’s. Without a doubt the golden age for the plaid shirt was the Seattle scene of the early ’90’s. Nothing any Scott ever did matched the magnitude of Seattle’s ambassadorial contributions to the evolution of the plaid shirt. These west-coast bad-asses learned from Haskal: if you’re a bad ass, you’re in flannel.
The plaid flannel shirt became a household item and has peaked in popularity. As a result, corporate intervention was just a matter of time and the genuine article that is the plaid shirt has become an endangered species. So as the summer season approaches and plaid-mania hits stores everywhere just consider where the plaid shirt has come from. Humanity runs to save the whales, to save the forests, to save the seals. Well, goddamn you, I challenge you to save the flannel shirt. Millions of Scotts (and Eddie Haskall) can’t be wrong.
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