Found out my beat-up work jacket is apparently fashion now

Ha, welcome to the club. My old welding leathers got the same treatment a couple years back. Took my kid to a flea market and some vendor had a rack of jackets that looked like they'd been through a shop fire on purpose, priced like collectibles. Mine had the same look for free, earned over about a decade of fab work.

The funny part is how long I spent trying to keep that stuff presentable. Used to scrub the sleeves with dish soap in the shop sink every Friday, trying to stretch the life of the look. Then one day a customer saw my beat-up gloves and asked if I was the guy who'd actually done the work on his building, and I stopped caring what the gear looked like entirely. Now the wear is kind of a resume. Only thing I'd say is don't let the flattery go to your head on the actual jacket. Once the lining starts fraying near the cuffs or collar it stops being a look and starts being a snag hazard around the torch. Mine finally retired to yard work duty when the armpit seam let go mid-job and I had to borrow a spare from the apprentice, who thought it was hilarious. Enjoy the fact that you're accidentally fashionable. Charge the hipsters for style advice and put it toward new gloves.

Funny reading this because I went the other direction. Bought a waxed canvas chore coat at one of those heritage workwear stores about eight years back, paid real money for it, and it looked brand new for so long I almost felt cheated. Then I actually started running a torch and now that fancy coat hangs at home while my beat-up old duck canvas one does all the work. The store coat is too nice to scorch and the shop coat is too ugly to wear anywhere else. Guess I own one fashion piece and one tool without ever planning it that way. The part that gets me is the break-in. No amount of factory sanding gives you a collar that sits right or sleeves that fall where your arms actually are. I've tried wearing new jackets in on weekends and they still take months of real sparks and elbow grease to feel like mine.

My nephew wanted my old one for a costume party last Halloween. Wore it with fake soot smeared on his face. I let him, but I checked the pockets first because I'd left a soapstone and a couple of squares in there. He returned it saying it smelled like burnt metal. That's not a costume, kid, that's Tuesday.

What gets me is that the store version of that jacket is weakened everywhere it looks worn, while real wear concentrates in the places that take the abuse, like the leading edge of the sleeve and wherever sparks funnel when you're bent over a joint. I checked my old coat once and the factory distressing on a friend's fashion copy was printed or sanded thin across the whole panel, which means it would fail anywhere, not just where the fabric was allready doubled or reinforced. Mine lasted because the damage mapped onto the actual hot spots. Hard to explain that to somebody who thinks a scorch is a pattern choice.

Gotta push back on the resume thing from the first reply. Worn gear reads as experiance to another welder, sure, but to a customer it just reads as somebody who can't replace a jacket. I showed up to an estimate in my old coat once and the homeowner kept glancing at the sleeve like she was deciding wheather to let me in the house. Now I keep a decent one in the truck for meeting people and save the beat-up one for actual work. The hipsters can have the look, I'd rather get the job.