What Is a Striped Shirt? The History of the Breton Top, from 1858 to Now

Journal · Heritage · 8 min

A French Navy decree, twenty-one stripes, and a century and a half of travel: from the decks of warships to Picasso's studio, from Coco Chanel to the pavements of Paris. This is the complete history of the Breton top - how a regulation uniform became the most enduring icon of French fashion, and the original blue and white striped shirt the world copies to this day.

What is a striped shirt? The 27 March 1858 Navy decree

On 27 March 1858, the French Navy issued a decree that would, without knowing it, draw the blueprint for one of the most recognisable garments on the planet. The text says nothing about fashion: it sets the "tricot rayé" - the striped knit - as official kit for sailors, and it does so with watchmaker's precision. That exactness is what still fascinates: a military regulation that doubled, almost word for word, as an aesthetic brief. So when people ask what is a striped shirt in the French sense, the answer begins here, with a piece of French naval heritage written down in 1858.

The decree prescribes, in the most widely reported version, twenty-one white stripes across the body, each about twice as wide as the twenty or twenty-one indigo blue stripes that separate them. On each sleeve, the count changes: around fifteen white stripes, set closer together. Everything is codified - width, count, neckline. That neckline, wide and clean, sits high on the collarbone: it is what we now call the boat neck, and it is one of the few details from the decree that has survived perfectly intact to this day.

Why so much precision? Because a regulated uniform exists to identify. The number and width of the stripes, fixed to the millimetre, allowed a French sailor to be told apart from a foreign one, and the Navy from any other branch of the armed forces. And because a large share of those crews came from Brittany - the Atlantic ports of Brest, Lorient, Saint-Malo - the English-speaking world eventually christened the piece a "Breton". So if you have ever wondered what is a Breton top, the name is a geographical tribute as much as a shortcut: the original Breton shirt is, quite literally, a Breton sailor's shirt.

Why stripes? Function, economy and legend behind the blue and white striped shirt

The question sounds simple; the answer has fractured into several stories, and it is honest to lay them out as they circulate. The most practical reading is visibility: a high-contrast pattern, white on blue, makes a man overboard much easier to spot in a choppy sea. The stripes were not ornament, but a safety feature - which is part of why the blue and white striped shirt has always read as a sea garment, not a city one.

A second reading is economic. Indigo, the deep blue of the decree, was an expensive dye. Alternating wide bands of undyed white with thinner bands of blue cut down the quantity of dye needed - so the regulation's "wide white, thin blue" rhythm may have had a cost logic as much as an aesthetic one. It is the most down-to-earth hypothesis, and probably the most credible.

Then there is the legend, and it has to be named for what it is. The story goes that the twenty-one stripes echo Napoleon's twenty-one victories. No official source confirms it, and nobody truly knows where the number comes from - but the tale is too good to die, and it says something true: from the very start, people have looked for meaning in those stripes, as if the garment was already carrying a story. The tradition of the striped sailor, in any case, is older than 1858 and goes back to the seafarers of the preceding centuries.

"A uniform designed to set sailors apart became the garment that brings them all together."

Leaving the Navy: Chanel, 1917, and the birth of the modern Breton top

For decades, the striped knit stayed on the quayside and the deck. Its first life was strictly utilitarian: a work garment - sturdy, anonymous. What tipped it over was not a distant designer, but the eye of a woman on the Normandy coast.

In 1917, in Deauville, Coco Chanel - already fascinated by menswear and easy fabrics - spotted the sailor's striped top on fishermen and dockhands, pulled it into her own wardrobe, and then into her nautical collections. The gesture was radical for the time: take a man's work garment and offer it to women at the exact moment they were claiming more freedom of movement. The Breton top left the Navy not by decree, but by desire. It became a symbol of ease and emancipation - the first chapter of a long social career.

Picasso, Cocteau, Gaultier: the artists' striped shirt

Once it had crossed into fashion, the Breton top found its ambassadors among artists. Pablo Picasso wore it in his studio - the image of the painter in stripes, brush or cigarette in hand, has almost become a self-portrait of the free creator. Jean Cocteau and other avant-garde figures wore it too: the piece spoke of the studio, the Mediterranean, a certain offhand brilliance.

Then came Jean Paul Gaultier, who made it far more than a wink. From the 1980s he adopted it as a personal signature, sent it down the runway and onto his perfume bottles, and turned it into an openly claimed emblem of French fashion. Yves Saint Laurent and the major Paris houses added their stamp. Through them, the striped shirt stopped being a costume and became a language: to wear stripes was to claim a certain idea of Paris.

The Nouvelle Vague: Bardot, Seberg and effortless French chic

If one decade fixed the Breton shirt in the global imagination, it was the French cinema of the 1950s and 60s. Brigitte Bardot wore it in Saint-Tropez and gave it, in a single beat, a sunlit Mediterranean sensuality with nothing stiff about it. Jean Seberg, cropped hair and stripes, in Godard's À bout de souffle (1960), turned it into the uniform of a modern, free youth - one frame was enough to lock in the link between the blue and white striped shirt and an elegance that never tries.

This is where the most stubborn idea crystallised: the Breton top as shorthand for "French chic". Not a flashy luxury, but a worked-on simplicity - a garment you pull on without thinking, that seems to think for you. From regulated uniform to symbol of nonchalance: the journey is complete.

The Made in France striped shirt revival: Troyes and the knitting craft

The story doesn't end with the icons. In recent years, the Breton top has lived through a revival that is no longer just aesthetic but industrial: the return of a garment actually made in France, inside a textile industry many had given up for dead. The heart of that revival has a name - Troyes, the historic capital of French knitwear, where tops have been knitted for more than a century.

That is where the La Marinière 1858 by Gauvain Paris is made - the model that carries the date of the founding decree in its very name. Knitted in Troyes from combed cotton, it is certified France Terre Textile, a label that requires the majority of production steps to be carried out in France. It is the most faithful made in France striped shirt we offer: boat neck, stripes knitted into the fabric rather than printed on top, construction inherited from the original Navy garment.

The rest of the Made in France collection and our other models are knitted in Europe - in France or in Portugal depending on the piece. All share the same principle: a dense combed cotton, stripes that run through the fabric, and a single, genuinely unisex pattern that moves from quayside to boulevard without changing its soul. That is our way of carrying the 1858 decree forward: not copying it, but keeping its standards. You can browse the full collection or read more about us on the about page.

Frequently asked questions

What is a striped shirt, in the French sense?

In the French sense, a striped shirt - la marinière - is a heavy cotton knit top with horizontal blue and white stripes and a wide boat neck. It was made official by a French Navy decree of 27 March 1858 as part of the sailors' uniform, before becoming a fashion icon thanks to Chanel, Picasso, Bardot and Gaultier.

What is a Breton top and why is it called "Breton"?

A Breton top is the English name for the original French sailor's striped shirt - the same garment as la marinière. It is called Breton because many of the sailors who wore it came from Brittany, in particular from the Atlantic ports of Brest, Lorient and Saint-Malo.

Why does the original Breton shirt have twenty-one stripes?

The 1858 decree prescribes, in the most widely reported version, twenty-one white stripes across the body, wider than the indigo blue stripes. Legend says the number echoes Napoleon's twenty-one victories, but no official source confirms it.

How did the Breton top go from uniform to fashion?

In 1917, Coco Chanel discovered the sailor's striped top on the Normandy coast and brought it into her collections, turning it into a women's fashion piece. Picasso, the Nouvelle Vague (Bardot, Jean Seberg in Godard's À bout de souffle, 1960) and Jean Paul Gaultier then made it an icon of French chic.

Where is a Made in France striped shirt made today?

Troyes, the historic capital of French knitwear, is still a major production hub. The La Marinière 1858 by Gauvain Paris is knitted there in combed cotton and certified France Terre Textile. Our other models are made in Europe - in France or in Portugal depending on the piece.