How Much Can We Learn from an Old Jacket and Catalog?

Quite a bit, as it turns out.

This story begins in 2010, when I found the Gulf jacket pictured above at a vintage shop. I loved the stripes, I’ve always loved the Gulf logo, and the jacket was just my size, so I bought it. It’s lightweight, so I tend to wear it in early autumn and late spring. It was also thematically appropriate when I attended the Daytona 500 in 2013.

Here’s how it looks on me:

Nice, right? The jacket is from either the late 1960s or early ’70s. It was made by the excellently named Unitog company, which made work attire for lots of American companies before being acquired by an even bigger workwear company, Cintas, in 1999. The Unitog logo, along with the similarly pleasing DuroPrest mark, is featured on the jacket’s tagging:

Like I said, I acquired the jacket in 2010. Now fast-forward to last month, when I was poking around on eBay and practically gasped when I saw a listing for this catalog:

Was my jacket one of the apparel items featured in this catalog? I looked through the eBay seller’s photos, and sure enough, there it was: