Carhartt: An American Classic and Great Women's Apparel

Rather than run yet another picture of me holding a gun or dead thing in this space, today we have Field & Stream’s Kristyn Brady modeling a Carhartt Women’s Work-Dry Base Layer Quarter Zip Shirt and a live trout.

Kristyn and I, along with millions of others since 1889, love our Carhartts. I wear the basic brown dungarees in the field all the time because they are tough and comfortable, and because I hope they make people mistake me for somebody who actually works for a living. Besides, brown duck is a great camo pattern if you sit still--just ask your father and grandfather.

In a world where almost every garment you wear is made offshore it was a surprise to read “Made in the USA” on a pair of new brown duck bibs I picked up recently. (I was also happy to discover that sometime since I bought my last set of Carhartt bibs the button fly has been replaced by a zipper, which is progress if you drink a lot of coffee.)

Many--but not all--Carhartt garments are sewn in the United States. Their factories in Kentucky and Tennessee employ around 2,000 people. They even have a “Made in the USA” line of clothing that is not only made here, it is sewn from cotton that is domestically grown too. That line consists of seven of their most famous and popular garments including the cotton duck Detroit Jacket and the Double-Front Work Dungarees. It will be expanded if there is sufficient customer demand, which I hope there will be.

While Carhartt continues to make their classic work wear they have a lot of new stuff, too, including a lighter weight duck they call “Quick Duck” and an expanded lineup of women’s clothes, which brings us to the picture of Kristyn, the shirt and the fish. Kristyn is picky about the fit of her outdoor gear (“Taking a small man’s coat and making it in pink doesn’t make it women’s clothing,” she griped at SHOT) but she approves of the way Carhartt cuts their women’s clothes.

This base layer shirt, she tells me, has the all-important princess seam (I know. Who knew from princess seams?) to help it better fit a woman’s shape. She says it layers nicely, is warm and versatile, and that the extended cuffs--they have thumbholes, not seen in this picture--help protect the easily burned backs of her hands from the sun. And as you can see it doesn’t scare fish. What more do you want?