Billd Founder Chris Doyle spent years on the jobsite before founding and leading Billd. In Field Notes from the Founder, he shares the stuff you only learn by being there.
Editor’s note: ATX Fashion Week wrapped this month in Austin, Texas (our home base). We figured it was a good excuse to ask our founder about a different type of fashion – what not to wear on a jobsite, specifically for folks new to the trade.
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Jobsite “Fashion” – How to Show Up Like You Belong
You’ve seen the stock photos: Two people standing on a jobsite, a woman in a pantsuit, a man in a blazer, both wearing brand new yellow hard hats with big smiles. They are pointing down at a rolled-up set of plans and talking to another man on the job site. (Everyone is always pointing.) Maybe there is a laptop, or maybe it’s pencil and paper. Sometimes you even see a protractor…and if you don’t know what that is, it’s because they haven’t been used since 1997.
It is meant to show a project manager and an architect talking to the superintendent. And it looks absolutely ridiculous.
If you have ever actually been on a construction site, you know that nobody looks like that. What you wear on a jobsite matters. It matters for credibility, it matters for safety, and—whether anyone wants to admit it—it matters for fashion.
There are really four critical components to your look on a construction site: your hard hat, your safety vest, your boots, and your pants. Get those right and you are in good shape. New to construction? This guide is for you.
The Hard Hat
This is the most important piece of an outfit on a job site. Nothing else comes close. Your hard hat says more about you than your resume, so it’s important to get it right.
Style
There are two main styles of hard hats. The front brim is a thinner profile around the sides with a brim out front. The full brim goes all the way around, similar to the kind of hat worn on safaris, just not as dramatic.
I prefer the front brim style. In my experience, people who are not on a job site every single day tend to go front brim while those who are out there daily tend to go full brim. Both are perfectly acceptable options.
Color
When selecting colors, white is a solid option. White tends to signal management, which can be a good or bad thing depending on the situation. Another option is a more expensive textured brick color—a muted reddish-brown that has some texture. These run about $150 and they are worth it, especially if you are new. The color hides the newness better than white or yellow, so you don’t stand out as much on your first day. That is a stealth move (take note).
Hot take: in my opinion, yellow is the worst option. Generic yellow hard hats scream, “I got this out of a bin.” That said, if it is worn enough and has some stickers on it, even a yellow hard hat can look good (I guess). But I would not start there.
My favorite is blue. It sounds unconventional, but a blue hard hat with a safety vest actually pops. It looks sharp. It is a pro move.
Wear & Tear
This is where it gets serious.
The biggest faux pas in all of construction is wearing a brand new hard hat. There is nothing worse. You will get ridiculed. Immediately, and without mercy.
It will be even worse if you show up to a project with a hard hat still in the package and try to assemble it on-site. These things are not intuitive. It pretty much takes a PhD to figure out how the suspension system clicks together. So if you are standing on the jobsite fumbling with the straps while everyone watches, you are not going to make a good impression.
To get some wear, your only choice is to scuff it up at home. Drag it on the driveway, drop it a few times, and rub some dirt on it. Do whatever you have to do so it does not look like you pulled it off a shelf 20 minutes ago.
This is where color choice comes into play. White is going to be harder to fake because you really have to commit to scuffing it up to look worn. The brick-colored hard hat? You can get away with less work because the texture hides it, which is another reason it’s a good idea for newcomers. Blue will also need some help, like stickers, because a clean blue hard hat is tough to pull off.
The Sticker Game
Stickers on a hard hat are mostly functional. GCs use them to confirm who has taken a safety course or completed a certification for that project. A lot of projects require a four-hour safety orientation. Once you complete the course, you get a sticker. You put that on your hard hat and the superintendent can see at a glance who has completed the certification.
Here is where it gets good. When you don’t remove those stickers, over time you build up this collection from project after project that can highlight your tenure. It shows how many GCs you have worked with and evolves into a resume on your head. That is a really important part of the hard hat game.
If you’re new to a jobsite and you don’t have any stickers, it’s tough. It’s not like a skateboard where you can slap a No Comply sticker on there and call it a day. But there are options. You can put your company name sticker on there. Material supply houses sometimes have stickers or you can check with vendors. You are going to have to get creative. If you don’t have a full sticker palette your hard hat can look a little sparse, but you have to start somewhere.
The gold standard in hard hats: a blue hard hat, well-worn, covered in project stickers. Nothing says veteran like that. That is high fashion in construction. Note: Sometimes you have to work with what you’re issued. If that’s the case, do what you can with what you have.
The Safety Vest
Safety vests are a piece of clothing, so the rules differ from a hard hat, in other words, a vest does not need to be beaten up to look good.
The Fold Marks Rule
The biggest faux pas with a safety vest, similar to a brand new hard hat, is wearing one with the fold marks still showing. Vests are sold in a nicely folded plastic wrap, and when you unpack it you can see the clear creases. It looks exactly like when you buy a new button-down shirt and unfold it for the first time.
Do not wear a creased vest right from the package. Always wash your safety vest before you wear it. Always.
Fit
The safety vest should be a trim fit, so you may need to get it tailored. And yes, it is perfectly acceptable to get your safety vest tailored. Just don’t tell anybody.
There are two main styles of vests. Most people on a project get the tank-top style vest, often with the subcontractor’s logo on the back so the superintendent or foreman can identify where their people are. The superintendents generally get the fuller vest, which looks like more of an actual vest that comes up to the chest and over the shoulders.
The tank-top style is not in fashion. You want the full coverage.
My favorite of all time is the one with the little American flag patch on the side and a pocket for keeping whatever you need on the project. If you can find this, that is the one to go for.
Wear & Tear
Unlike a hard hat, you do not want your safety vest to be trashed. You are looking for a nice amount of light wear: enough that it doesn’t look brand new, but not so much that it is falling apart or filthy. Wearing an extremely dirty safety vest doesn’t look appealing. Instead, you risk looking lazy and like you don’t take care of yourself.
The Transition Problem
Here is a risk nobody talks about: You have a nice, perfectly broken-in safety vest. Then it starts to wear out and you need a new one. The moment you show up in a brand new vest, you look like a new person on the project, which no one wants.
My recommendation: own multiple safety vests and rotate through them so the transition from one to the next is not so abrupt. Rotating vests is also convenient because sometimes you can’t find your safety vest. Having a backup is super helpful.
Boots
Similar to a hard hat, the more worn your boots, the better. You want to make sure they’re broken in.
The tricky part is that for a commercial project, you need steel-toed safety boots with a specific sole classification because they have to meet the safety requirements. And the problem is there aren’t a lot of providers making high-fashion safety boots. Your options are pretty limited to what’s functional.
That matters because your boots directly impact your pants selection—more on that below.
Pants
This is where the boot situation creates a real problem.
Most construction boots have a wide collar around the ankle area, so your pants have to be big enough to fit over it. If you are wearing slim-fit pants or more fitted chinos, there is a real risk that they do not fit over the boot properly (or worse, they are really snug over the boot). That is a major fashion faux pas and you’ll get called out – a boot-leg fit. Something that wraps around the boot comfortably but is not so loose that you look ridiculous is the sweet spot, which is tricky to get right.
Both jeans and chinos are perfectly acceptable on a jobsite. Chinos show a little more of a management presence on a project but there is no issue with wearing chinos. You won’t be viewed as a construction newbie for wearing them.
My approach was to keep two to three pairs of pants I knew worked on a job site. If I knew I was not going to a site that day, I would wear my slightly more fitted pants. Simple system.
The Rest
Shirt
Your shirt isn’t very important. You are wearing a safety vest over it, so nobody really sees it. Maybe a collared shirt, maybe a button-down, but probably not a T-shirt because a lot of the workers wear T-shirts signed by their subcontracting company. That is a different situation.
Do not overthink this one.
What to Carry
If you are new to job sites, keep it simple. Maybe bring an iPad, but do not bring your laptop or a bunch of accessories. A lot of times you are taking a construction elevator, going up scaffolding, navigating tight spaces. Traveling light matters.
The Safety Harness Power Move
If you are actually going to be working at height on a project, you may need a safety harness. Here’s something you might not know: having your own harness is next level.
If you have your own harness draped over your shoulder when you walk on the project, it shows you know what you are doing. It shows you are important and that you aren’t afraid of being on scaffolding. That is an authenticity move that is hard to fake.
It is also another piece of gear that promotes your credibility on a project. If you are serious about your construction fashion game, owning a harness is the finishing touch.
Final Field Note
Construction fashion is not complicated, but it is real. Get the hard hat right since that is 80% of the battle. Wear a clean, well-fitted safety vest without fold marks. Get boots that are broken in and safe. Make sure your pants fit over them without looking ridiculous.
Final advice for newcomers: Do not show up looking like a stock photo. Show up looking like you have been there before.