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It's certainly been a lively discussion.

Capturing character and spirit is really the position I’ve always adopted. I really don’t mind the wonky or sloppy stitching so much as I bother about the method of how it is being (re)produced. Why does it take many hours of work to make something that was originally made in a fraction of the time? An exact replica is a tremendous achievement … further ‘replicas’ starts to diminish that achievement (and it can only be an exact replica on a tag size for tag size, other sizes are not replicas they are approximations). Mostly though I enjoy reading everyone’s positions on this.

In that case, if you tried to replicate a wonkily stitched repro jacket, it might come out perfectly straight! Where will it end?

Yes, the 1943 jacket based just on one jacket. Plenty of info in the Sugar Cane thread also plenty of videos on Clutchman TV showing the vintage pieces (2 jackets and 2 jeans, 1943 and 1946).

Since this is based on one jacket (I assume), it's safe to say that another vintage jacket (if found) could display a completely different set of inconsistencies no? Or was the SC collectables jacket based across a few jackets maybe? I mean, wasn't it during one of the most stringent times for material use and skilled workers were far and between, thus why they are so "wonky."

I think the level of slop was predominantly worse for Levis products for some of the reasons described earlier - re new factories, whereas Lee already had a number of factories. Only ever seen a few pairs of images of WW2 made cowboy pants and jackets and the only slightly sloppy stitching was on the pleat stitches, even then it's bearly visible. As for Bluebell's Wrangler brand, that wasn't introduced until 1947.

Thanks, beautiful FrEak.

Yes

thanks for sharing the link, may i know if this website is legit? thx again

@CSL here is some picture material with the vintage pair of which the SC1943 is base on: https://dig-it.media/clutch/article/799433/ https://bookshelf.wisebook4.jp/html/toyoenterprise/51863/#1

Right, beautiful_FrEak. The first time I read the blog post that was my interpretation. Then on the second reading I picked up this in the text [with a focus on faithfully replicating the “character”] and that caused me to question whether it was a full on replica job or more of a philosophical excursion, type of thing. If it is a replica, then I find the level of wonkiness rather shocking. Makes me think people must have been pretty desperate to get a denim suit, in order to tolerate that level of slop. Of course I understand denim history fanatics of today being turned on by those elements. One thing I'm wondering about, I believe Lee (& Wrangler?) were making jeans & jackets in 1944. I've never heard anything about their products having the sloppy sewing element. Perhaps someone here can shed some light on that subject?

Yet everybody (?!) on here loves and favours the more irregular denim which just replicates the imperfections of vintage denim. So we all justify to ourselves what we prefer (and that's what counts I guess). Is it because to sew badly is easy and to replicate imperfect denim is hard? We had this topic of the wonky stitching some weeks back but I didn't take part but here is my (obviously) biased view. When I started with raw denim and repros I favoured the perfect and neat stitching. I would have been disappointed to see sloppy sewing for the price I paid. The first model I really noticed which featured the morey wonky stitchwork where the Real McCoys 003 and I didn't like it. Mainly because every pair was the same and the design of the errors wasn't very nice. I admit CSF started my interest in the badly sewn jeans. Everything was done on period correct machines and the errors were more natural and every pair was kinda different (if I see his newer stuff it's often pretty exaggerated and looks like a bad copy of his early work). From this point though I looked a bit different on sloppy sewing. I've got some old Denime stuff where the sewing is kinda sloppy but not on purpose and I am sure I would have been disappointed when I would have bought those in 2014 or so. Nowadays, I find it pretty neat and it's kinda my favourite part Denime in the Orizzonti era as well had their WW2 pair with sloppy sewing (and thus it predates the Real McCoys pair I mentioned earlier) but here again: all errors are the same. Hayashi-san even went so far to replicate the same errors on his Resolute 714. And this feature I still don't like very much. Why do I make an exception for Sugar Cane (and here is the justification part)? Because like I wrote earlier it's a 1:1 copy of an existing pair so kinda a perfect repro. Not a fantasy pair copied into oblivion like Denime, Resolute, Real McCoys, SDA or Full Count did in the past and do now.

Exactly. Is there such thing as perfect wonkiness? Obviously not, and perfect repetition of the same mistake on different products kills the intent. Just like in jazz improvisation on a standard theme, perfect replication with note-to-note precision is impossible, it will be something new each time.

Couldn't have put it better myself. Enough wonkiness, l'm now looking forward to my non-wonky, straight stitched pre war FW tux.

My wardrobe reflects that sentiment also (my only ww2 jeans are OA and FW), but I guess I’m glad the people who liked the CSF angle now have more choices without paying that goofball.

I think it’s a bit of over-saturation in the market, it seems like there are so many people offering such a similar product that it’s just not as unique as it once was. I appreciate the SC ones after seeing them in person and seeing side by side photos of the originals compared to the reproduction. It’s a testament to their ability to train their production team to really hone in on the details. But everyone just letting some runoff extend off their stitches and calling it “wonky” seems a bit lazy and low effort. All in all I agree with @l13902733261, I’ll take the FW approach to war era denim over most others, but y’all already knew that.

Isn’t this the thing people loved about CSF? Is it just now that it doesn’t seem so unique because you can get erratic stitching from brands that used to use straight lines, so it’s played out? I sort of don’t care much either way - as far as bad design goes I’ve seen tons worse from many other brands any time I’m in a regular store - but appreciate that these aren’t so much about the spirit as the letter of the flaws. Japanese industry has been known to make a great copy of something - it doesn’t mean it necessarily cares a whole lot about the origin story of the garment.

That approach to wonkiness has always struck me as ultra corny; that was already my main complaint with the early rounds of Warehouse DSB, and it’s wild to see how much farther folks have continued pushing it these days

as someone who's always had a hard time sewing in a straight line, i am feeling really validated by these

Been rough and toughing some FW 47 the past couple of months Fit is great. Super baby soft abrasion resistant denim Edit: here's a photo of the front

It reminds me of trying to kern text to look badly kerned. There's a skill in trying to make something look bad, but in a good way.

Much prefer FW approach on the WW2 theme. where in an alternate universe, people still hold their standards even at war.

Ah but SC are only repro'ing that one wonky model so all the repros need to be the same wonkiness proportionately 😉

@Lendo Pics of 800xx as requested. Half waist 44.5cm, as shown Inseam 88cm Both these measurements are exactly as per those recorded on Bears website so I imagine the rest will be accurate too but if you want me to check any others, let me know.

Yes that’s correct. Impressive nonetheless in my opinion.