Carhartt date code checker, the month and year on the care tag

On the small white care tag sewn inside the garment. On a jacket that tag is often at the base of the neck or along a side seam. On pants and overalls it is often along an interior side seam or inside the waistband, so check every seam before deciding there is no tag. The code is three or four digits, usually printed near the RN number, RN 14806. On later tags it is the first digits on the line under or beside that number, and the longer number after it is not part of the date. On some 1990s tags the code is printed in red on the back of the tag, beside the union label.

Month first, year last. In a four digit code the first two digits are the month and the last two are the year, so 0698 is June 1998 and 1102 is November 2002. In a three digit code the month was printed without its leading zero, so 591 is May 1991. Not every short number on a tag is a date code, though. One 1998 tag carries 958, which does not read as a month and year at all, and collectors report plain numbers such as 902 on older tags, so date those by the label instead.

It dates codes from 1985 to 2018. Dealers and collectors publish dated tags across that span, from two or more independent sources for most years, though we found none from 1995 and only one each from 2003 and 2006, so those years rest on the same rule. A few readings are consistent with facts outside the code, such as a jacket coded 1115 embroidered with a 2015 safety award. It also reads 1984 and 2019, and says on the result that those readings are hedged, because only one source prints a dated tag from each. A code that reads as 2020 or later is named and not dated: no source we hold prints a dated tag from those years, and some tags carry a season code instead.

No. It dates the garment, it does not authenticate it. The code is a printed number on a care tag, and reproductions and relabeled pieces exist. It is useful as a consistency check: a code reading 1994 on a jacket whose label style or country of origin belongs to a much later period is a contradiction worth looking into.

Only in part. Collectors in one forum report that the earliest Carhartt WIP pieces, from the late 1990s, carried a tag like the workwear line's, with four digits read the same way. That rests on a single community, so treat a date from an early WIP tag as a rough guide. Later WIP labels use a different layout: a dotted number on the top line, such as 900.13PO01810.0513, and an item number starting with I0. The few sources that read that dotted number do not agree on it, so this checker does not date it. It reads the care tag date code on the American workwear line.

Not one that dates a garment. Carhartt puts no consumer serial number on its garments, and there is no lookup for the date code. Carhartt WIP's site does have a lookup, for product safety certificates by the item number starting with I0, but it does not date or authenticate a piece. The other numbers on a tag are a style number, an RN number that identifies the company rather than the item, and sometimes a longer order or lot number. Only the date code tells you when the piece was made, which is why this checker asks for it alone.

Because none of the sources we use prints a dated Carhartt tag from 2020 on. Read the usual way, a code like 0322 would be March 2022, and that may well be right. But some tags give a season on a small separate tag instead of a month and year, such as SP 20 for spring 2020, and our sources disagree on which tags do it, so we will not put a date on a recent code until dated tags confirm the rule still holds. A code newer than our sources is not a sign of a fake.

The label design, the country of origin and a union label are the usual cues, and they matter most on older pieces with no readable code. One dealer guide reads a union label alongside Made in USA as a sign of the earlier era, before production moved offshore, so treat it as a broad bracket rather than a date. The zip, the snaps, the lining and the cut all have to agree with the period the code gives.