A Hand Painted Vintage Worker jacket in pale blue.

About the Jacket

This is a mid-weight, longline French worker jacket with visible button fastenings, painted on the front with large blue butterflies

All of the jackets/coats in this collection are vintage and have a couple of marks due to wear. They’ve been hand picked and collected over the last 5 months especially for this collection.

Sizing: All jackets and coats are unisex. This jacket is listed as a S (depending on the desired fit) but vintage sizes are tricky to match up to modern sizing. Please check your measurements before purchasing to avoid disappointment.

Pit-to-pit = 20”

Length (back of neck to bottom hem) = 31”

About the Design:

The Large Blue Butterfly is a beautiful species that has always been rare in Britain with an interesting lifecycle. Adults lay eggs on time or marjoram, once caterpillars hatch, they use scent, song and appearance to mimic Myrmica red ants. Worker ant then carry the caterpillars into their underground nests where they are placed with ant grubs. The caterpillars spend 10 months feeling on the ant grubs before forming a chrysalis and emerging as adult butterflies. Due to their uniquely specific life cycle, these butterflies have faced a massive decrease in numbers. As they have such a reliant relationship with ants, the decrease in ants has had a knock on effect on butterflies. Habitat destruction, a change in farming techniques and myxomatosis in rabbits has lead to destruction of the ants optimal habitat of a south facing, sloped warm microclimate with short grass which meant that in 1979, the large blue butterfly was declared extinct in the UK. 

The species has been reintroduced to the UK from continental Europe as part of a long-term and highly successful conservation project which has meant that the UK now has the largest concentration of large blue butterflies in the world! You may have spotted one of these butterflies in Devon, Somerset or Gloucestershire. Swedish butterflies were introduced into the UK after being declared extinct, these butterflies and their descendants look slightly different to the butterflies that died out so it is easy to identify illegally caught specimens being sold as decorative items online.