Paul T

Thanks holio. I do have a Fuji  X-100 I use as my main camera, but most of these were taken with the little Sony RX100, the camera I bought the g/f! The first model, no viewfinder,  but it's tiny and pocket-sized, and even the out-of-camera jpegs look pretty good.

 

It looks like these will be some tough bastards to fade, which is excellent as it will make for a more challenging contest.

thanks once again for the most educational posts, well done on the tour leg Paolo!

Exactly. I think they will be bastards and interesting for that reason. The denim is also interesting in that it gives lots of crinkling, back yoke especially, plus you can also see train tracks already. Definitely quite distinctive.

Oh and I forgot to say, looks like substantial leg twist so far, too.

So, I gave the jeans a hand wash and machine rinse before sending them off to Mandel on Monday. I like the denim, it definitely has that bright greeny natural indigo hue (I'm assuming it's synthetic indigo but dyed to look like natural). I've been wearing them alongside my Levi's three pleat jacket, which has a similar  natural indigo look. The feel is quite unusual to me, as they're a 1920s cut but in a heavier fabric, which is a little bulkier and fluffier than the Cone 1920s denim. I think I would like to try them from raw and wear them really hard - but I suspect, rather like my 201, they won't go down easy. Before I got these, I was wearing my LVC 1890s for the summer. THey've had at least 10 months of wear, but have hardly crocked. All of these early natural indigo repros aren't like Samurai that show wear after three months.

IN my last week, I ventured out to Spitalfields, home of one of London's best vintage markets, and lovely old buildings. The houses on the right were built for Huguenots who moved into the area in the early 1700s, and built up the silk trade. Much gentrified, it's still a great area.



I love sneaking looks into buildings that are being restored.



THis is the basement of a local antique shop, pretty much as it was made in the 1700s.



I love this cupboard; from the dull sheen you can guess it's lead paint.Yummy.



Nearby is artillery Lane. This is one of the most beautiful, original old shop fronts in London.

Narby the street is full of fantastic small alleyways, with old bars and pubs. Ths is my friend Carl, who still manages to make a living designing record sleeves. He's working on a Cure book at the mo!





THis was Friday morning, I think, the day before wash day. Beautifully cold, crisp and clear.

On the way back to Greenwich, I changed trains near one of my favourite old buildings, Wren's Stephen Walbrook. It's a mini prototype for St Paul's Cathedral. Walbrook was an old stream, which led into the Thames, and it's rich in relics. Whenever they building some new phallic glass and steel erection, they always find Stone Age or Roman artefacts in the dig.

So, the jeans are drying on the radiator. Here's a few updates on where they've been i the last couple of months.

've been out and about in a few places. One was the V&A Revolution exhibition, where I gave a talk on music and the counterculture. But we won't mention that as I was dressed in Levi's for the occason (altho with my TCB Navy jumper). But when I had a trip out near Bath, they came with me to see one of England's most beautiful towns. It's called Chesham; it's where they filmed a popialr bodce-ripper TV series called Poldark, with some tall dark and handome Byron-esquer figure as the hero. All filmed on these streets.



This is the High Street. I guess they removed the large plastic bins for the filming, but otherwise it's pretty much as it was 200 years ago.



I love all these old doorways. You'll be pleased to know that a photobucket error has saved you from seeing even more of them.



I'm guessing this is an abandoned abbey. Likely Henry VIII, as well as chopping off two of his wives' heads, plundered this place of all its riches.



This was the walk up to my work place.



The office is straight ahead. Flash, eh?



And the office itself. Called Methuen House. I was actually working in the old stables, but they're not quite as photogenic, giving a talk to songwriting student on the blues form. Appropriate, huh?

Just a quick note to say all is cool, I will probs post the jeans Monday, once they're dried, and should be able to post more pix then too, if I can find a few minutes, and if movement is restored to my fingers in this (gorgeous) cold weather.

I think they're 32 waist, pretty much dead on and probably 33 or 34 leg.

Hmm. So any takers?

Hope you folks are all well. Having some problems with that useless and outmoded site, photobucket today, otherwise I would've posted some photos. I'll try again tomorrow.

Who is next for the jeans? I will give them a handwash over the next couple of days I.'d definitely prefer to send them to the UK or Europe next, as we seem to ratcheting up costs for customs and transport recently!

Edit: there's definitely a problem with photobucket. I can log in, but not upload. Any other basic sites I can try instead? My previous alternative was imageshack but I think that's pay-for only now...

loomstate? Natural indigo? with a cinch, natch? Hmmm.... would have to be September/the fall for me. Will probably take that long for me to find the $$$$.

(I'm only being nosy... not seriously pushing for natural indigo, as whatever the recipe I have found it incredibly hard to get a good fade).

Two things: 

 

First, lovely updates Paul T! 

 

Second, as this is the "Taking Care of the World Tour", I want to personally extend my apologies to all humanity, as a sad American this dark day...

Ah... well we had it here with Brexit. Strangely I suspected there was a good chance it would happen in the US too. If you can present yourself as the agent of change, rather then the status quo, that tends to win an election. Yes, what happens next will be an interesting experiment.

Anyways, here's some happy stuff from the world meridian.

Trying to distract myself on this grim day.

Paris was beautiful. I wrote a long blah which got lost... so here are some pretty pictures from the Musee des Arts et Metiers. A beautiful science museum (which airbrushes out the contributions of every other nation to the advancement of science.. a fascinating example of how the French hate the British).







A beautiful design for a lightweight car, and its inventor, Paul Arzens.





For hc, a denim update. The micro-wear is looking lovely, although there's no movement on whiskering etc. I feel this is denim that would really benefit from being worn in hard.

I had that day off on the Friday, then a 3am start so I could join the family in Paris. We'd done a houseswap, so they stayed in our place, while we hung out in a beautiful apartment just off the Rue St Denis... not too far from the Canal district.

The town hall and museum. It's  a fascinating town, in that it was a centre of protestantism, something I didn't know they had in 17th century Poland.



Again, lots of lovely tiny streets with spooky towers and turrets.



There's still a number of gnarly old buildings, that happily haven't been restored.

OK, sorry for delays, here's a few snippets. The jeans had a bit of a trek from Russia to Poland - help up in customs with a huge duty bill! But I got to wear them in my last couple of days there, followed by a trip to Paris.

I was in Torun, for a film festival. A beautiful town on the Vistula, full of gothic buildings.

The nights were usually damp and foggy, as autumn draws in. I was staying in a hotel that was previously an Austrian barracks.



The buildings are astonishingly well-preserved. Although there's a tradition of rebuilding/restoring that looks so intrusive, you sometimes wonder how much of the original patina is left.

Bottom of the bill is still... on the bill! Ha! The evening was a Q&A session that was so popular we had a stage invasion... this fella was high on vodka, so although impressive it wasn't qjuite as memorable as the time a woman on crack interrupted one of my talks in Detroit.



I had a wonderful guide who happened to be vegan. So most of the time we went to veggie curry restaurants etc. But the night after my talk I figured I needed some beer, from the local microbrewery. TO eat I went for what was the most traditional item on the menu - it seemed to be a limb from a small pig that was lopped off with a machete and cooked for 10 minutes or so before being slapped on my plate in a pile of horseradish and mustard. Hit the spot perfectly.





 

they look legit although I don't know the LVC model - I presume it's a 78 repro with the stock control tear off strip, from 1999. I'll dig out my 2000 Japanese catalogue as it wouldn't surprise me if that's a pair produced for the Japanese market.

Just a quick note for Sufu followers in London:

I'll be speaking about denim and the counterculture at the V&A on Friday, as part of the Revolution weekend. More details at the link...

I have also taken a pair of 60s LVC as part of my fee. I think there have been some detail improvements in this model.  It's the one LVC pair I haven't worn in all the way, so I'll be popping up on this thread again I suspect.

Details https://www.vam.ac.uk/shop/whatson/index/view/id/3910/event/Revolutions-Weekender--Amber-Butchart-In-Conversation-with-Paul-Trynka/dt/2016-11-04/eType/1/free/1

jeans made it to me... eventually! Pix to follow soon.

He says the Black Seed is pretty much the contest denim, that it's slightly heavier (altho the contest denim was heavier than similar).

Here are the second best contest pair.

Interesting that peeps say these aren't the best fade. I don't love every single Cone denim, but they are all different.. and I reckon the contest denim is the perhaps the best denim I[ve ever worn in. Looks great, not at certain stages, but at every stage.

I heard these bad boys are 32W?

i'm in Torun, Poland next week, then Paris and it's possible I might actually be doing something interesting. Count me in if you can get them to my hotel by Wednesday or THursday.

Second part of my interview with Allen Little, who designs the yarns at cone. Be prepared to geek.

https://loomstate.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/gripping-yarns-part-2-hairy-experience.html

what what what? Yes yes yes!

I honestly don't know. But I'm hopeful there will be revisions and improvements to LVC. This interview was before the 'new" 1915 which I don't know anything about; I think it's safe to say now that the Roy x Cone contest jeans used the XX15 warp yarn, and that counts as some of the best denim I've ever worn.

Some Cone denim is generic, just as some denim from, say, Edwin, is generic. That's what you had on your Gustin's. You have to compare like with like - look at, say, Roy's loomstate or LVC 1915, and compare that with the best Japanese denim. I was looking thru photos recently, and was struck by how the Roy contest jeans looked great at absolutely every stage of their wear - not all denim does that.

I put this piece up to educate people and it's really worth reading, to get a feel for what varies between denims (yarns, then dyeing), and what doesn't really (how the denim is loomed).