Name: The Problem With Carhartt ( The Death Of The Detroit Jacket)
Uploaded: 2026-03-09T23:29:46.000Z
Duration: 12 min 27 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

If you're like me, you've probably been familiar with the Carhartt brand for a long time, but

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maybe you've never bought any of their products or you've just never bought the Detroit jacket and you're not familiar with it.

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Obviously, if you're in Canada, Carhartt is kind of hard to come by.

So I'm going to go over the history briefly and I'm also going to explain to you why it's so hard to get a good looking Carhartt Detroit jacket today.

This guy, Anthony Dillolo, breaks it down perfectly in the Carhartt Reddit.

So just to give a brief history, it debuted in 1954 and it was actually originally in blue denim, which is weird because nobody thinks about the Detroit jacket being in blue denim.

Now it's most popular probably in its brown color.

I'd say it's, you know, original Carhartt brown, or what it's called today, I think is Hamilton Brown on the website.

But I'll show you the first model that is the blueprint for what is popular today.

So over here you've got the six blj and you can see it's got that classic collar, the classic fit.

It's got the straight bottom, the sleeves are the right length, and

it's not a tailored fit, it's a little bit of a looser fit, but

it's something you could fit a hoodie under.

And it'll keep you warm in the fall, might keep warm depending where you are in the winter.

And overall, it's just a perfect classic jacket that was probably released for a fair price back in the day.

And I'm sure since it was classic Carhartt, it had good durability and it lasted a super long time.

So after that in 1998 came the J43, and it had a short life.

Here are three of the debut colors, with the coolest one, in my opinion, being hunter green.

Obviously, I'll never find this in a thrift store because I live in a popular area that's also in Canada.

So Carhartt wasn't widely available where I'm at.

It's got the same classic shape, but it had that sandstone wash to it.

So had a little bit more of a worn look to it.

And yeah, same basic shape and something that I would definitely want to own that I'm sure costs about $350 resale right now.

So basically something that I'll never be able to own and something that Carhartt discontinued in 2000, which is the same year I was born.

And here's definitely the most popular Carhartt jacket.

You've seen it in Interstellar, you've seen it in Looper, you're going to see it in Reacher this year.

a bunch of different browns, bunch of different shades, bunch of different color colors.

And it's got the same classic style, same straight cut bottom with the normal sleeve length.

Still not tailored, which is good, you know, if you want to put a hoodie under it and if you want to wear it in the winter, layered.

So, you know, you'd think if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

But obviously Carhartt had different plans.

Do you think everything is fine with the J97?

There's been 19 years of no problems, but Carhartt decides to discontinue it.

There's not really a good reason to do this.

One of the things they cite is that a lot of people were ordering it in the tall size.

So they're saying that maybe the jacket was too short.

And then they prepare to make a new jacket.

I don't know if there was a pause in between manufacturing.

I wasn't aware of the Detroit jacket back then, but

I'm going to get into the model that followed the J97 and the current model that exists today.

You know, it's a good jacket when it has a name that just rolls off the tongue like this.

You've got the 103828 Detroit Jack from Carhartt.

I'm assuming this is the new factory they've went to.

I don't know what third world country this was made in, but here's the two main colorways.

The blanket lining feels super thin now, but they said that it's actually softer.

Well, I'm sure the blanket lining is going to be softer when it's, you know, as thin as paper.

But regardless of that, you've got the two models here.

The sleeves are super thin and they're too long.

It just looks cheaper, the material is thinner.

And we'll go into a little bit more detail in the next slide.

Yeah, so you hear you say, I'll reiterate, you got the longer sleeves, you got that softer blanket lining that's actually just shit material.

And then you've got my biggest fucking issue with this jacket.

And it's the dumb ass, ugly diaper ass drop tail.

I don't know why the fuck they added this.

I don't know why anybody would want this in their jacket.

I guess it's the argument that the last model everybody was ordering in tall so they wanted to make sure that nobody had a problem with the length of this jacket.

So they added a fucking diaper wing to the back of it.

It looks almost like a combination of those T shirts that were trendy in like 2013, you know, with the ones that have the tails on the back.

It's a mix between that and a jacket and it's just terrible.

Why would he want a jacket that has a frickin cape on the back?

So the quality's worse, the sleeves are longer, it's got a worse design, it's got a diaper on the back and it costs $15 more than the last model cost retail.

I don't know what that works out to, I'm bad at math.

But obviously it's stupid that a jacket that's clearly made of worse quality in a worse manufacturing plant is going to cost you 15 additional dollars.

So now you're in my original position, you've realized that the new Carhartt jackets suck and that the old ones are very hard to get your hands on.

You go on grail and you spend $300 on a destroyed thrifted one that somebody probably died in and that looks like somebody might have dropped their bodily fluids onto.

So I went and walked my way over to the other Carhartt brand, also known as Carhartt work in progress.

And I'm not really familiar with the history of this brand.

I know it's like the streetwear version of normal Carhartt.

I've heard that the durability isn't quite the same, but the style is significantly better now.

I've never been inside a Carhartt work in progress store.

But just based off the prices, I've made a picture of what I assume it looks like.

So you walk yourself over to the Carhartt work in progress store and everything is looking amazing.

The jacket's got a very close to original design.