Creation of our knitted sailor jacket Rachel

This sailor's jacket is based on the specifications of the French Navy that we have been providing for years.
This sailor's jacket is made in our workshops in Guidel and Quimper (as are all our garments, by the way) from a "Rachel knit" fabric. This Rachel stitch or "maille jetée" is a technique between knitting and weaving, which allows to realize an "indémaillable" stitch. The army, and in particular the French Navy, has always required the use of robust materials. This knitting, complex and solid, allows it to acquire exceptional qualities both on its durability and its flexibility.
This fabric has been used for ages for the Royal, since, as you probably already know, the knitting of the national navy was codified by decree ... in 1858.

Much has been written about the rationale behind the number of stripes on the body and sleeves. The 1858 decree actually stipulates the following: 21 white stripes 20 millimeters wide and 20 or 21 indigo blue stripes 10 millimeters wide on the chest and back; 15 white stripes and 14 or 15 blue stripes on the sleeves. It has been said that the number 21 refers to the number of Napoleon's naval victories.

Let's debunk the myth about the number of stripes. In reality, this coding allowed 3 things:
- to design a body knit with placed stripes, which is more elegant than continuous stripes. Uniforms are often about elegance. And the French marinière is different from the Russian navy;
- to standardize the size of the stripes in order to have bodies in tune. This is indeed the role of the uniform.
- to achieve a "design", that is to say a set of stripes, which can correspond to the maximum of imaginable sizes: the large marinières and the smallest would thus have "placed" stripes without having either too much plainness, or not enough.