Reading a Carhartt Tag: Style Numbers, WIP and Duck

A Carhartt tag is unusually informative, which is lucky, because almost everything else about a used work jacket is ambiguous. Two coats from a decade apart can look identical once both have faded to the same sand colour. The tag is where the differences are still written down, and it repays being read line by line rather than glanced at.

This is a guide to that reading, and then to the second half of the problem: judging what forty seasons of actual work have done to the cloth.

The style number is the only field that identifies the garment

Everything else on a Carhartt tag describes a property. The style number names the specific product, and it is the thing to photograph first.

Where it is and what it looks like

It normally sits on the main sewn-in label with the size, or on a secondary label inside the side seam. It is short — a few characters, sometimes with a letter or two at the front. On many garments a three-letter colour code follows it. Our own current stock happens to demonstrate this neatly: there is a bib overall tagged R38 BRN, and BRN is brown, exactly as it appears. Once you have seen a couple, the pattern of style number plus colour code is obvious.

Why the letter prefix is a pattern, not a rule

Collectors will tell you the leading letter tells you the garment type — that jackets tend to start with J, knits with K, bottoms with B. As a rough pattern this genuinely does hold across a lot of the range, and it is useful for orienting yourself.

It is not a rule, and treating it as one will mislead you. Carhartt has used several numbering formats over the years and they coexist. Looking only at what is on our racks as this is written, there is a pocket tee tagged K87, a pair tagged B17, a plaid shirt whose tag reads 101158 with no letter at all, and a shirt carrying TK5710-M. Four garments, four different shapes of code. Any decoding scheme confident enough to explain all four is a scheme that will eventually invent something.

How to actually use it

Do not parse the code. Look it up. Search the style number as a string and see what comes back: the model name, the fabric weight, the cut, the lining, and the years it appeared. A style number turns a vague listing into a specific product you can compare against another specific product, and it lets you check a seller's description against something independent.

It also gives you a way to shop deliberately. Once you know the number of the jacket that fits, you can look for that number rather than for a silhouette in a photograph. This is the same trick that works on sportswear, where the product code does even more of the lifting — the Nike and adidas version of this method is worth reading alongside this one.

Carhartt WIP is a different line, and knowing that ends most arguments

If the tag says Carhartt WIP, you are not holding the American work range. WIP stands for Work In Progress: it is the European line, designed and sold separately, aimed at a streetwear market rather than a job site.

This matters for three practical reasons. The fits are cut differently and the sizing does not map cleanly onto the work range, so a size that fits you in one will not reliably fit in the other. The numbering and the model names are its own. And the two lines have different buyers, which means the same word on two tags describes two different markets.

None of this makes either one better. It makes them different products, and a listing that treats them as interchangeable is one to read carefully.

Country of manufacture, and what it does not date

Older work-line pieces are more likely to be made in the United States, and production moved substantially offshore over the 2000s. So country of manufacture is a soft signal that points in a direction.

It is not a date and it is not a quality verdict. Carhartt has continued to make some garments domestically, offshore production spans a wide range of factories and decades, and plenty of the most sought-after pieces were not made in the United States at all. Use it as one line of evidence among several, in the same way you would use any other single line on a label.

The union label

Some older domestically made pieces carry a union label stitched near the main tag. Where it is present it corroborates American manufacture and points older, which makes it a genuinely useful confirmation.

Its absence proves nothing, though, which is the part people get wrong. Plenty of legitimate garments never carried one. Treat a union label as a bonus when you find it, not as a test that a garment fails by not having it.

Fabric names are the second most useful thing on the tag

Carhartt names its cloths, and the names are specific enough to be worth learning.

• Duck. Heavy plain-woven cotton canvas. Stiff and unfriendly when new, and it takes real wearing to break in — which is precisely why a well-worn one is desirable and a rigid one is a project.
• Washed or sandstone duck. The same cloth pre-washed at the factory so it starts soft. Comfortable immediately, and it will never develop quite the same hard-edged fade lines as the untreated version.
• Blanket lined. A woven blanket-style lining, usually in the body with quilted or lighter material in the sleeves. Warm, heavy, and the classic look.
• Quilt lined. A quilted synthetic lining. Lighter and less bulky than a blanket lining, and generally the better choice for wearing indoors.
• Chambray. A light plain-weave shirting, not a canvas at all — a completely different garment weight even where the tag styling looks similar.

The lining is worth as much attention as the shell, because it is the part that decides whether you will actually wear the thing. It is also the part most often omitted from a listing.

Reading wear on duck canvas

Duck ages in a way that separates cosmetic change from structural failure very cleanly, once you know which is which.

Fading is cosmetic. So is softening, so is the pale line that develops along a fold, so is the darker patina around the pockets where hands have gone in and out for years. This is the character people are paying for, and a jacket that has none of it is a jacket somebody left in a wardrobe.

What actually ends the garment is elsewhere:

• Cuffs and hem edges. Fraying that has gone past the fold and started eating into the body is not going to stop.
• Knees and seat on bottoms. A thin patch is a hole with a delay on it. Hold the fabric up to a light source and look for translucency before you look for holes.
• Hardware. Zips are the single most common reason a work jacket is retired, and a heavy separating zip is an expensive repair. Run it fully open and fully closed before committing. Check that snaps still hold under a firm tug rather than just closing.
• Seams at stress points. Armpits, crotch, pocket corners. Carhartt seams are usually triple-stitched, so a failure there means the garment has had a hard life rather than a normal one.
• Contamination. Paint, oil, concrete and fuel are part of the story on genuine workwear and many buyers actively like them. Mould and persistent smoke are a different matter, because neither reliably washes out.

Where the copies are

The most copied part of Carhartt is the label itself, because it is the cheapest thing to reproduce and the most visible. Beanies and other small logo goods attract the most attention for exactly that reason.

The defences are unglamorous. Check that the label stitching is integrated into the construction rather than applied over a finished seam. Check that the style number returns the garment you are actually looking at. Check the weight of the cloth, which is the hardest thing to fake cheaply and the first thing a copy compromises on. And be warier with small accessories than with large garments, because the economics favour copying the small stuff.

Buying one you cannot handle

Most of these checks assume the garment is in front of you. When it is not, the questions worth asking are specific ones: a photograph of the tag with the style number legible, a photograph of the inside of the cuffs and hem, a shot of the knees or elbows held against a light, and the zip shown fully open.

Ask for measurements taken flat rather than a size, because work garments are cut generously to layer over other clothes and a tagged size on an old coat guides you to very little. A seller who will not photograph a cuff has told you something about the cuff.

The same instinct applies to denim, where the equivalent field is the patch rather than the style tag — the Levi's version of this exercise works through the same problem from the other end.

What we can and cannot tell you about ours

Everything we list is pre-owned. Where a piece still has its original tags attached, that describes its condition and nothing else — it still came to us second-hand, through an estate, a collection or a consignment.

We photograph the garment that is for sale rather than a better example of the same style, we put the style number in the listing where the tag still carries one, and we take measurements flat. We do not authenticate, grade or certify anything, and we would rather state that plainly than let a well-designed listing imply otherwise. Workwear sits mostly in men's clothing, with older pieces in vintage and hats and bags in accessories.