Style n Stripes
The low down on the quintessential top for the high season
It is a style icon and long been a star of stage and screen, but the Breton stripe shirt is also a summer wardrobe essential.
Stolen from the French marin (sailor), and Italian gondoliers, the classic marinière has long been the preserve of pop royalty, tortured artists and smouldering matinee actors.
THE COUNTER CULTURE IS ONLY A BRETON TOP AWAY
My last post extolled the virtues of all things nautical and in particular the joys of the male winter coat par-excellence- The Pea coat. This week continues with the sea faring theme. Indeed not only is the Breton, which originated as a working top for Brittany fishermen, synonymous with the sea but it has also become a metaphor for all things French. Like the English bowler hat or the US cowboy boot it’s impossible to disentangle said item of clothing with the place of its birth; when we think of the Breton top we picture it alongside onions, berets, bicycles and the dodgy accents of ‘Ello Ello’.
