How Dickies' Workwear Went From Old Reliable to High Fashion
Some clothes featured in the Dickies-Opening Ceremony collaboration.
Photographer: Brayden Olsen
Dickies’s chief archivist Ann Richardson, who started working in Williamson-Dickie Manufacturing Co.’s merchandising department in 1970, remembers when Dickies’s primary focus was to make tough workwear that was designed not to draw attention to itself, while managing to embody American durability.
As the company’s longest-tenured employee, now approaching 50 years, Richardson has seen one of the most fundamental U.S. clothing brands evolve from office and factory stalwart to become first the uniform of skater-punks and now, the envy of high fashion. These days, celebrities from Justin Bieber to A$AP Rocky are wearing a collection she shepherded to appear in a line from uber-trendy fashion designers Opening Ceremony and offered in some of the country’s trendiest shops.