Dungarees or Coveralls

First up we can start with the origin of the word - Dungaree was first coined in the 17th century when it was used to refer to a cheap, coarse, thick calico cotton cloth, called Dungri in Hindi, sourced from a village in India called Dongri in the region of Bombay, now Mumbai. This type of cloth was often dyed blue (Indigo?) but sometimes left un-dyed and therefore natural, worn by the poor for its durability.

Dungri cloth was then exported to England and used for manufacture of workwear clothing such as overalls.

In England this morphed into Dungaree & by 1891 Rudyard Kipling the author of books such as Jungle Book was using the word as a reference to clothing as well as a type of cloth.

 Dungarees, also called bib overalls in the US , are a type of garment usually used as protective clothing when working. The garments are commonly referred to as a pair of bib overalls maybe in part as they are a cross between overalls and an apron as they were worn over your non-work clothes.

The first illustrated evidence of bib overalls or dungarees in the US was in a sales catalogue from 1856.

First mass production of dungarees was by Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis in the 1890s. The first jeans they invented were actually overalls which were waist overall or waist-high overalls, consisting of suspenders attached to denim pants with buttons, so no bib but suspenders, similar to straps on dungarees.

However Carhartt, Dickies, Wrangler, Lee Cooper all lay claim in some form to them whether they had the first ‘real’ dungarees due to the functionality aspects, such as hammer loops, pockets for coins, watches, pencils, rulers etc in the bib portion or pockets on the hip, slant & patch or button less, hookless & with zippers.

One of the oldest brands of overalls, OshKosh B'gosh, founded in 1895 in Wisconsin, specialised in hickory stripe blue and white stripe bib overalls &  claim that 1 million men were wearing OshK Oshkosh B'Gosh in 1916.

From the beginning, denim overalls / dungarees were popular workers' garments due to their durability so were worn across all industries such as agricultural workers, carpenters, painters, lumberjacks, miners, fishermen, butchers & chefs. The iconic image here shows them on railway worker & were alsomanufactured by Blue Bell (Wrangler) which began in North Carolina in 1904.

Across the decades since they have been popular & associated with 1960s / 70s with the hippie subculture & acid house subculture in the late 1980s paired with a smiley tee 😋