Design AtlasA 1858 French Navy regulation put this knit jersey shirt on Breton sailors (matelots). The popular claim that its 21 stripes symbolise Napoleon's 21 naval victories is a romantic story added later rather than a documented fact.
Coco Chanel saw it on a trip to Brittany in 1917 and folded it into her own collection, carrying it from workwear into fashion; Picasso and later Jean Paul Gaultier kept it in circulation as a shorthand for "French chic."
Structurally it sits at the opposite end from pinstripe — the bands are wide (usually close to or a bit narrower than the white gaps) and high-contrast, so the stripe reads before the garment's shape does. In CSS it's the same single repeating-linear-gradient as pinstripe, just rotated to run horizontal instead of vertical.
When to use
Use for nautical/French-basics branding and summer campaigns. Narrow the bands too far and it collapses into pinstripe — keep the width contrast generous.