How many striped things do you own? Go and count.

The Breton top, probably several. The deckchair. The windbreak. The scarf you actually reach for. The socks you would save in a fire. The awning of every café you have ever wanted to sit outside.

Nobody decided to love stripes. We just do.

I have wanted to design a range of them for most of my career and have never had the chance, because they never belonged to the brands I was working for. You develop an eye and then spend twenty years pointing it at somebody else's taste. So building These Good Days is a bit of a special moment for me.

NOWHERE TO HIDE

But stripes haven't always had such a good reputation.

For a long time, they were used to mark people out. And not in a good way.

From the thirteenth century, stripes belonged to people the rest of society had decided against. Prostitutes, executioners, lepers, travelling performers. In England, a courtesan wore a striped hood. In Marseille, a striped cloak. Nobody respectable went near them.

Historians describe these dress codes as "technologies of visual control", which is a chilly way of saying you had to be able to spot someone who might be dodgy from across a market square.

A stripe is very good for that.

Even monks couldn't escape the stigma 

The stigma was strong enough to cause trouble for people who really should have been above it.

When Carmelite monks arrived in Europe from the Holy Land wearing striped habits, it caused decades of controversy. Universities refused to admit them dressed in stripes. They held out for the best part of fifty years before giving in and changing to white robes in 1287.

Even the church couldn't quite shake the idea that stripes were for people who didn't belong.

And the idea didn't disappear with the Middle Ages.

In 1820s New York, Auburn Prison put its prisoners in black-and-white stripes, making them instantly recognisable as prisoners. And, usefully, harder to miss if they escaped.

By now, the stripe had become very good at one thing. Making people visible.

The value of standing out

But being impossible to miss isn't always a bad thing.

French sailors were issued striped shirts. Against grey water on a grey day, a striped man is a man you can still see.  The very quality that had made the stripe a mark of disgrace was actually useful at sea.

For centuries, stripes had said: Look at this person. They don't belong.
Now they were saying: Look at this person. We need to find him.

The stripe hadn't changed. Its value had.

SO BEGAN OUR LOVE AFFAIR WITH STRIPES

At some point, the stripe crossed the line from useful to desirable and found its way into high fashion.

We would all like to say Chanel took it there, and historians have been arguing about exactly how much credit she deserves ever since.

A pattern people had once been forced to wear became one they actively wanted to wear. Soon, everyone wanted to take credit for making it fashionable.

Even Picasso, who was rarely wrong about how a thing should look, wore one.

And then stripes became synonymous with happiness

Once people started choosing stripes, they put them everywhere they wanted to feel good.  And nowhere more than the seaside.

France introduced paid annual leave in 1936, opening up holidays to hundreds of thousands of people who had never had them before. The coast filled with deckchairs, awnings, beach huts and towels.

All striped.

The stripe became part of the visual language of the holiday. You didn't have to be on holiday to know what it meant.

The sight of a striped windbreak on a grey beach can make you feel better before you've even sat down.

That's quite a journey for a few lines.

WHICH BRINGS ME TO THE HUMBLE TEA TOWEL

Stripes have a habit of ending up on the things we use every day.

The notebook. The water bottle. The sweater you've had for nine years. The bag that goes to work and then to the gym and then to somebody's house for dinner.

A floral makes an object a bit precious.
An elaborate print asks to be revered.
A stripe does neither.

It makes a useful thing feel like somebody thought about it.

Next week: what happened when we stopped admiring stripes and started designing with them.

Sioux
These are the good days. Why not put some stripes in them.