And it seems sometimes like we are preconditioned to feel nostalgia for the Breton style from our very cradles – certainly if our parents had ever been shopping in Petit Bateau or its many imitators. While full on nautical gear has a certain undeniable campness in the grown adult, it is somehow entirely acceptable to dress your little heir in a sailor suit. Even if the therapy bills will eventually come back to haunt you.This nautical nostalgia evokes warm summer holidays, probably before we’ve ever even been on a warm summer holiday – and regardless of the fact that, while I know little of life at sea, I suspect that sailors probably don’t spend their days soaking up the rays on the deck of a Mediterranean yacht, having slightly more pressing matters like not capsizing, wondering into hostile waters or taking part in a war.The Breton is, of course, the, ahem, mothership of stripes. Its origin harks back to an act of parliament, no less – the 1858 Act of France which introduced them as the uniform for French navy seaman, allegedly as it helped sailors who had fallen overboard to be more visible. Clearly day-glo neon yellow had yet to make a splash. Fashionistas must had rather more respect for a man in uniform those days, as the look caught on, first among working fisherman, then gradually among the less briny but terrribly chic elements of society. In the 30s Coco Chanel – who else? – sported them, in the 50s and Picasso painted in them – all self-consciously adopting a look associated with utilitarian workwear rather than high fashion. Which, of course, makes it rather more ironic that the uniform of the working seaman should now be constantly adorning the catwalk models of expensive fashion labels, but that’s fashion for you: never short of an irony or two.
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