TYPE 401 PLEAT POCKET SHIRT IN PURPLE LOGWOOD COTTON DROPCLOTH

The Pleat Pocket Shirt is adapted from the Type 901 Pleat Pocket Jean Jacket. The Pleat Pocket Shirt is cut with a large front panel pleated into the yoke to form a large hand-warmer pocket. Unlike the 901 jacket, this shirt's pleat is held in place with a twin line of stitches to form the pocket, but let out loose below the pocket, with a standard shirt hem below. The fabric is cut sideways, with no shoulder seam, creating a soft biased shoulder that stretches out and softens as the garment wears in. The shirt is sewn with all-cotton thread and finished with dyed cotton-covered metal buttons and a Made in USA blue label.

The cotton dropcloth fabric is woven in USA from American cotton. The main customer for this fabric is Sherwin Williams, a paint company founded in Ohio in 1866. The intended use is as drop-cloth, hard-wearing fabric to cover floors and furniture during interior painting. The fabric structure is a tightly woven left hand twill, which acts as a right hand twill when cross cut.

The dye is logwood, or bloodwood, is a tree that is native to the West Indies and South America. When the ground heartwood is soaked in water it makes a blood red liquid which can be used as an indicator solution, changing colour depending on what is added to it. Used as a dye it can produce a range of colours from black and purple to a delicate fawn. Aztec and Mayan cultures used logwood for centuries, and it was highly prized when it was first brought to Europe by the Spanish in the 15th Century. In the 1570s Elizabeth I of England ordered privateers to seize Spanish logwood cargoes, escalating hostilities between the two countries and leading, in 1588, to the sinking of the Spanish Armada.