From at least the 1300s smiths wore unique protective leather aprons and when visual images multiplied in the Georgian era, blacksmiths were usually depicted wearing stout leather aprons over their shirt and breeches. While working inside the smithy they often went bareheaded or covered their bald/shaved head with a close-fitting round ‘nightcap’: they did not wear the fashionable 18th-century periwig due to the hot working conditions. Leather aprons remained symbolic of smiths and farriers throughout the 1800s/early 1900s, guarding them from sparks, functioning as a lap for metal sheets and as a pad for the horse’s hoof. Sometimes the apron included a square bib fastened with shoulder straps or a pointed bib buttoned to the shirt, the apron skirt often being fringed at the bottom or split in the centre, to cover the front of each leg separately. The typical Victorian blacksmith smith wore a soft cap but by the early 1900s the ubiquitous working man’s cloth cap was the usual head wear.

By the 1700s aprons were well established as essential work gear for butchers, either blue, following Butchers’ Guild Tudor guidelines, or white, and worn over breeches and shirt or a sleeved waistcoat. During the early-1800s blue became the customary apron colour, useful for masking blood stains, and white or blue washable over-sleeves were used to protect the coat sleeve. Victorian butchers often wore blue coats or overalls too, the colour firmly identifying their trade and inspiring the term ‘butchers’ blue’. By the mid-1800s dark blue aprons often bore distinctive horizontal white stripes, their width theoretically denoting the butcher’s status, for example master or apprentice. The Butchers’ Guild also specified that butchers should wear a hat and tall top hats were correct until the 1860s, when bowler hats became usual. In the 1890s straw boater hats grew popular for butchers’ summer wear and by the century’s turn were so closely linked to the trade that the straw boater was often used for butchers’ business signs. During the early twentieth century the butcher’s frockcoat or overall was made of serge, blue jean or bluette (bluish woollen cloth), the striped apron usually stout jean or cotton drill, a waterproof oilskin or, later, rubber apron used for market. After WW1 many adopted the white overall coat widely worn in the food industry, with the striped apron.

Jobs involving working with flour inspired the wearing of white clothes, and for bakers and cooks comfort and cleanliness were also factors. During the 1700s and early 1800s they wore a white linen turban-like ‘nightcap’ and large white apron, bakers’ delivery boys also wearing an apron and often a white jacket. Victorian bakers’ headwear varied, but eventually the flat Tam-o’-shanter style cap was favoured as the most useful shape for balancing trays of pastries on the head. From the late 1700s, male cooks wore a distinctive long-sleeved white ‘waistcoat’ (a short, lightweight linen jacket) and apron, the Victorian chef’s white clothing following advancing guidelines about health and hygiene. His cap ranged from flat Tam-o’-shanter or ‘Pork Pie’ shapes to the tall ‘Cauliflower’ styles of the late 1800s and 1900s.