The story of the jumpsuit really starts with what is properly called a “boilersuit” or “coverall.” A quintessential product of the industrial revolution, the boilersuit is a loose-fitting garment made of heavy canvas or denim, designed to protect workers’ street clothes and bodies from oil, soot, grime, sparks and other workplace hazards. As distinct from what we’d now call overalls (which consist of pants with a bib and suspenders), boilersuits cover the entire body, with a belt or elastic band at the waist and some kind of fastening that extends from navel to throat. They have a collar but usually no lapels, and often include a long, exterior thigh pocket to hold tools, and interior pockets in the trousers. Similar to the conditions under which they were worn, the exact origin of boilersuits remains murky, with no one person or industry credited with their invention—though one explanation credits late 19th century railroad workers and other mechanics, who checked and cleaned locomotive boilers. Whether these beginnings are apocryphal or not, the boilersuit would prove incredibly popular with manual laborers of all kinds, and soon spread to factories around the world.

Given their association with the proletariat, boilersuits were also popular with leftist intellectuals and activists in the 1920s and ‘30s, including many members of the Bauhaus movement, and were even used as an unofficial uniform by Republican anti-fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War. Because of their loose cut and “no frills” vibe, these outfits also carry the connotation of gender equality, as women who fought alongside their Marxist comrades or who entered the workforce during the World Wars wore coveralls on factory floors—summed up most famously in the character of Rosie the Riveter. Ironically, early jumpsuits were also favored by Italian fascists, popularized by futurist designer Ernesto Michahelles, whose 1919 jumpsuit design looks like something you’d find on the racks at Rick Owens. Michanelles called his jumpsuit design “the most innovative, futuristic garment ever produced in the history of Italian fashion.”

From the shop floor, boilersuits made their way to the racetrack, where they became the preferred garment of mechanics and drivers (who would go on to wear similar drab jumpsuits as tank drivers in World War II). For mechanics, these racing garments (usually thin, white, cotton) kept the grime of automobiles off their street clothes, and would often feature their team’s name on the back and their own on the chest. Drivers wore identical gear, with the effect of something like a minimalist team uniform, as opposed to modern day racing suits, which are festooned with sponsor logos and designed to keep drivers cool while also resisting flames and impact. The looser shapes popular during the classic days of racing have recently been updated by Ralph Lauren, who, in September of 2017, held his Fall/Winter 2017 fashion show in the garage of his Bedford estate. Models and waiters mingled among Lauren’s vintage car collection, and were attired in black jumpsuits with the words “Ralph’s Garage” emblazoned in white script on the back. Yet another reason to join team Ralph.

The jumpsuit as we know it is really a flight suit. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “jumpsuit” didn’t enter American usage until the late 1940’s and supposedly referred to a paratrooper’s uniform—the only hitch is that during this period, World War II, allied paratroopers actually wore a two piece uniform, only later switching to one-pieces, leaving open the question of how this term first became applied to them. Regardless, the flight suit is what most people are actually visualizing when they think of the military version of jumpsuits, first designed for British pilots in 1917 by Australian aviator and inventor Sydney Cotton, and subsequently known as “Sidcot Suits.”

In the following decades, when fighter jet pilots began passing out from the G-forces of their high speed maneuvers, the US and Soviet militaries developed what is now called the “G-suit,” which astronauts and military pilots still wear today. Made in sage green or tan, this multi-pocketed one-piece garment is meant to force blood out of the wearer’s legs and back into his or her brain, keeping pilots alert and alive. G-suits are a lot more high-tech than their predecessors, and aren’t generally available to the public. You won’t find many at military surplus stores, so for inspiration, you’ll have to stick to images of Tom Cruise in Top Gun or Will Smith in Independence Day. I’ll leave it to commenters to sort out who wore it better.

One of the stranger incarnations of the jumpsuit is known as the “siren suit,” a coverall-type garment made famous by Winston Churchill during World War II. This one-piece outfit came with pockets, pleats, and a belt, and was worn over normal clothes—meant to be slipped on at a moment’s notice, in case bomb sirens went off. Of course, Churchill’s versions were a little more luxe than the average Brit’s, custom-made for the prime minister by Turnbull and Asser in pinstripe, blue serge, and most famously, green velvet. And, unlike his compatriots who wore them out of modesty or necessity when running from their beds to bomb shelters in the middle of the night, Churchill wore them practically everywhere—including to the US during D-Day preparations with FDR, and at Yalta, when the allies were deciding the future of Europe. Only three of these siren suits are supposedly still preserved, one of which (the green velvet one) can be viewed in Turnbull and Asser’s Jermyn Street basement.

Why Churchill chose the siren suit (which he also called a “romper suit”) as his wartime uniform remains somewhat of a mystery—certainly they didn’t flatter his figure. Nor were they really successful at signaling his understanding of the common man—as most people didn’t wear these things, even during the height of the Blitz. While talk of the one-piece will usually return to notions of expediency, for Churchill, it seems to have been more about eccentric branding. Once you’ve seen a picture of him chomping a cigar and striding across his lawn in a pinstripe siren suit with a homburg on his head, it’s hard to imagine him dressed any other way. For Churchill style, check out Brooks Brothers’ Fall 2018 Collection, which seems to feature one model in a gray pinstripe jumpsuit with tie and trench—that, or they’ve just tucked a suit into some pants.

Jumpsuits reached peak saturation in the mid-1970s, popular as a unisex garment for disco-lovers. Think fat Elvis or the Bee Gees circa Saturday Night Fever. Instead of emphasizing practicality, these garments attempted to cast their wearer in a sexual light. This meant a change of material and cut from the baggy and workaday, to poly-blends and terry cloth, and tighter, crotch-hugging variations. For obvious reasons, this trend fizzled out pretty quickly, and since then, jumpsuits have briefly cycled in and out of fashion, carrying with them a host of conflicting histories, uses and symbols. This includes a brief reign in '90s, when of-the-moment fashion brands like Guess and Tommy Hilfiger turned overalls into fashion statements; appearing on the backs of hip-hop royalty, these pieces were known to be styled with one strap-on, one strap dangling off, undone.

Today, wearing a pair of overalls, coveralls, a boilersuit or a jumpsuit means that you're likely at the intersection between tried-and-true workwear—and flat-out hype. While labels like Carhartt and Dickies have continued to resonate by creating coveralls for the working man for decades, brands like Supreme (who recently incorporated a coverall into its collaboration with legendary anime Akira) take the piece from a place of function to place of pure hype.

When you wear a jumpsuit, it signifies both the future and the past, right wing and left wing politics, war and peace, and of course, practicality. Though most of us don’t need clothes that keep coal ash out of our trousers or force our blood to oxygenate our brains—nor are we necessarily hoping to show solidarity with the workers of the world, or to let people know that we’re sexually active—a jumpsuit can signify all those things. But whatever your intention (even if it’s simply laying about your apartment all day), if you’re wearing a jumpsuit, it definitely tells people you mean business.