Workwear British-Made Men's Parkas — Voted by the Community

The word parka comes from the Nenets language of Arctic Russia and first appeared in English writing in 1625. In the Aleutian Islands it simply means 'animal skin'. Arctic peoples, including the Inuit, made hooded parkas from caribou or seal skin to survive extreme cold. The parka reached Western wardrobes largely through the military. The US Army standardised the M-48 fishtail parka in 1948 and first used the fishtail design in 1950, during the Korean War. The cheaper M-51 followed. The N-3B, with its deep 'snorkel' hood, was developed in the early 1950s for flight crews working in very cold regions. In Britain, the fishtail parka became a symbol of the mod subculture in the 1960s. Mods wore surplus parkas on their scooters because they were practical, cheap and easy to find in military surplus shops. Newspaper photographs of parka-clad mods fixed the coat in popular memory. British-made parkas today continue this practical tradition, built to keep out the wind, rain and cold of a British winter.