What Chef Designs makes, and who it is for

Everything in this catalogue is cut for a room that runs hot, splashes, and sends its clothes through a commercial laundry twice a week. The coats, shirts, pants, aprons and hats are chosen for that room, and the card tells you what does the garment up before it tells you anything else.

1978 founded
23 styles in the range
32 colourways
18,929 ratings

Six shelves, cut for six kinds of Saturday: a court, a trail, a pool, a cold walk, the rest of the week, and the tops that go over all of it.

Chef Designs makes uniform for professional kitchens, and has done since 1978. The range starts where a kitchen starts: a double-breasted coat that closes over the chest twice, cut from a cloth that can be washed at a temperature that kills what a kitchen carries. Everything else on the five shelves is built to the same brief.

What we make

Chef coats are the shelf the brand is known for: eight and ten pearl button fronts, a knot-button coat, full, 3/4 and 1/2 sleeves, a women's cut, and black versions of the two most-ordered coats in spun polyester. Cook shirts are the shelf for everyone who does not need a coat, closing on five grippers or five buttons, with a one-piece collar and a chest pocket. Cook pants come two ways: a side-elastic pant with no button at the front, sized waist by length, and a baggy pant on a full elastic waist with a drawstring. Aprons cover the four shapes a kitchen actually uses -- full bib, short bib, waist and cobbler. Hats and neckwear are the cheapest line on the sheet and the one an inspector looks for first.

The second idea is the closure. A coat is described here by what does it up, because that is the decision a buyer makes and the one a photograph settles badly: eight pearl buttons, ten set closer, or knot buttons that come off in a commercial dryer and go back on from a card of spares. The buttons on the white coats are made not to yellow under laundry chemistry. Under the closure the cloth is nearly always a 65/35 poly-cotton twill, pre-shrunk, with a stain-release finish on the coats and a soil-release finish on the bib apron.

Who it is for

You, if you are the person who signs off the uniform order and gets asked in March why the whites look grey. The garments here are chosen for the wash as much as for the shift: a commercial laundry runs hotter than a domestic machine and uses chemistry that strips a finish off a cheap coat in a season. That is why the cards print the blend, the finish and the button in plain words, and why the phrase "industrial laundry friendly" is treated on this site as a construction claim about the garment rather than a promise about anybody's laundry contract.

Sizes run from XS to 5XL on the coats and shirts, with tall runs on the eight-pearl coat and the long cook shirt; the cook pant is sold from 28x30 to 54x34; aprons, hats and the neckerchief are one size, and where a finished measurement exists -- 28 by 24 inches on the short bib, 40 by 20 on the neckerchief -- it is printed instead of a letter. Prices sit between nine and thirty-seven dollars, which is why most kitchens buy in threes and rotate.

What we will and will not say

A card describes a garment: how it does up, what it is cut from, what it carries, what run it comes in. What a coat does for you over a twelve-hour service is yours to judge, and the pages leave it to you. Where a page touches a rule or a body of public advice -- the fibre label, the care label, the flammability standard clothing is sold under in the United States, or the requirement that a food employee wears clean outer clothing -- it is written under a named public source, read on the date printed beside it.

The one verifiable thing we say about ourselves is the year, 1978. Everything else you might want to know about a garment is on its card, and how the figures on those cards are kept current is set out on how we update the catalogue.

02The brand

About Chef Designs

What we cut, who orders it, what separates a coat sold with its closure and its run printed from one sold by a photograph, and how long we have been at it.

What does Chef Designs make?

Uniform for professional kitchens: double-breasted chef coats with eight or ten pearl buttons or with knot buttons, in full, 3/4 and 1/2 sleeve and in a women's cut; cook shirts that close on grippers or buttons; cook pants on an elastic waist, sized waist by length, and a baggy chef pant in the black-and-white check; bib, short bib, waist and cobbler aprons; and chef hats, skull caps and neckerchiefs. Five shelves, most of it between nine and thirty dollars.

Who is Chef Designs for?

A kitchen rather than a cook, most of the time. The people who order from this catalogue are chefs putting an opening order together, owners replacing a season of whites, and cooks who have decided which coat they want and are buying their own. The garments are cut for a room at 40 degrees with a flat top in it and washed by a linen service at a temperature no home machine reaches.

How long has Chef Designs been around?

Chef Designs has cut kitchen uniform since 1978, which is 48 years at the time of writing. The double-breasted coat with a stand-up collar has not changed much in that time, because the kitchen it is worn in has not; what has changed is the finish on the cloth and the buttons, both of which exist to survive a commercial laundry.

Is Chef Designs the same as the other kitchen uniform brands?

The cut is a trade standard and we do not pretend otherwise: a double-breasted coat is a double-breasted coat. What differs is what a card is willing to state. The closure is named and counted, the blend is printed in the order a label has to give it, the pockets are counted rather than described, the size run is the run the garment is cut in, and where the site touches a rule -- fibre labelling, care labelling, flammability, clean outer clothing -- it names a public source and links it.

Where is Chef Designs sold?

Through our retail partner, which is where every buying button on this site opens, and where the size is chosen, the payment taken and any exchange handled. This site is the catalogue: what a garment is cut from, how it does up, what it carries and what it cost at our last update.

The catalogue is easiest to read from the day you have planned rather than from the price list. If you are starting from scratch, the front page of Chef Designs lays the six shelves out in order, and the sizing block on it settles the letter and the length before you open a card.

How the prices and size runs on these pages are kept current is a separate question, and it is answered on how we update the catalogue.

Every closure, every run

Every coat, shirt, pant, apron and hat in the Chef Designs range sits behind this button, with the price from our last update against each one.