turbozed

Here's a good link for those interested in history:

http://www.levistrauss.com/about/history/denim.htm

When the official goods destroyer person was destroying your stuff, did he say anything like: "Wow! This selvage denim is a lot more resilient to the destruction process than regular denim!"

Sorry, bad joke.

holy crap that's pretty cool actually. when i was a kid i was waiting for the day that people would wear lights embedded in their clothing like in Tron and listen to music similar to "Living on Video" by Trans X. THE FUTURE IS NOW!

If anything they're a great conversation piece at a theme party/club. I was hoping the hoverboard would come out first....

The material on those Super Nuts looks like it can stop bullets. And what's with the trend of putting fat Buddha-like dudes on the leather tag on jeans? Is True Religion trying to copy Evisu or is this due to some other link between jeans and fat Buddha-like dudes?

Edited by turbozed on Apr 6, 2006 at 01:27 PM

Cut-offs are the staples for the never-nudes.

RIP Arrested Development T_T

Let me tell you about my experiences with sizing because it seems like you're in the situation I was in. I'd say I'm a 31" waist. Everyone told me to size down 2" if you want a nice fit (not a loose fit but snug fit) on the RRDS because they grow a lot. Well after 1 week of wear your 31" grew too big (probably would've happened to me). So the 29" seems a good idea right? Yes...BUT. If you're anything like me, the 29 will SEEM TOO SMALL when you first wear them. Seriously man, I could barely slip them on. And after they were on, it took 10 minutes to put no all the buttons with considerable huffing and puffing. I was almost convinced that they were too small (99.9%). The only reason I gave it a shot was because the endless warnings I got about size growth and the difficulty of returning the jeans to kitchener. Now that I've worn them for about a month, I can tell you that they are fit perfectly and have molded to my body. The first couple of days were ridiculous though. If your experience is anything like mine, then my advice is don't give up if it feels too tight at first. Run around the house a bit. Do some squats and pelvic thrusts. They will break!

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oh the white bonsai sweater is dope.. but too bad they put the logo on it, ruins it for me. and it should be a hoodie. ah well

--- Original message by xcoldricex on Apr 3, 2006 08:48 AM

As for the rest of the thread: Hey, if the guy really liked the hoodie and was willing to drop 400 on it and is excited, good for him. No need to be so harsh! I enjoyed that head-sized camera comment though. LOL!

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Quote: it's more of a sad reminder, really, of how far the US has fallen in producing quality goods. thanks, wal-mart.

Yeah, gee -- the United States dropping ranks in textile production really means that the US doesn't make "quality goods." Let's drop our massive R&D budget and go back to making jeans! Yeah!

--- Original message by minya on Apr 4, 2006 01:25 PM

LOL I gotta agree with you on this minya. Just because the Japanese make better denim, that doesn't mean the U.S. is "on it's way down" in any sense. There's that logical causation argument and another is also the economic demand argument. If there were enough kids out there demanding the best denim possible, I'm sure good ole American ingenuity would produce some new crazy outlandish material.

Sarcasm rocks when done well. Thanks min. LOL.

--- Original message by turbozed on Apr 4, 2006 01:45 PM

way to take what i said out of context. all that fancy book learnin' is getting to you, noob.

--- Original message by giantreptile on Apr 4, 2006 05:01 PM

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My trusty nudie RRDS after about 1 year of regular wear. The photo is a little over exposed, so they're not quite as white in real life. Don't have any "before" photos, but you all know what they look like. Enjoy!

http://img97.imageshack.us/my.php?image=nudies15ml.png

--- Original message by choice_genes on Mar 15, 2006 10:10 PM

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Quote: it's more of a sad reminder, really, of how far the US has fallen in producing quality goods. thanks, wal-mart.

Yeah, gee -- the United States dropping ranks in textile production really means that the US doesn't make "quality goods." Let's drop our massive R&D budget and go back to making jeans! Yeah!

--- Original message by minya on Apr 4, 2006 01:25 PM

Sarcasm rocks when done well. Thanks min. LOL.

I like the detail on the inside cuff as well. Or at least the concept of it. I think I'd rock a more understated pattern and color if it was available. Still, if you like em then don't later haters convince you otherwise.

Few points. Looks are subjective. I completely dig J-girls but I don't think anyone can say what type of girl is superior. Personally, I wouldn't want a submissive girl. I find challenging girls more fun (not bitchy, but challenging). When I was in Japan, I really did enjoy the way they dressed. Wonder when skirts and leg warmers are gonna come back in the US. When it comes to fashion though, there's another explanation. One of the major reasons why Japanese are very into fashion is because of the consumer society and excess of disposable income. I don't know if you live in a bit city, but even in America there are financial-social reasons why people in the city dress better. People in suburbia are interested in buying Plasma TVs, houses, cars, etc. These type of people are happy to buy their clothes at J.Crew and Express. Conveying status is done when they drive you in their cheap clothes to their mansion in their SL500. Now you take a city like NY or SF where you walk to work and rent. You don't want to pay for and maintain an expensive car, so you go out and buy a pair of Jap raw selvage and the latest sought-after shoes and you rock em while walking on the street. People notice your shoes a lot more in NY than in Pleasantville, USA. Now take "city living" to the extreme. Imagine a society where it's socially okay to live at home with your parents and have them support you at the family house (remember real estate is hard to come by when you're packed in like sardines in Tokyo). Some OL (office ladies) live at home and spend ALL of their money on expensive designer clothing shopping at Ginza. You don't need a car because you can take the train everywhere, and you're not gonna buy any property due to the pricing. The society is so much more consumer-oriented than the US it's ludicrous.

Another factor to consider is the need for Japanese youth to "differentiate" themselves. Now, I'm asian and don't want to seem racist. But when everyone else has black hair, brown eyes, yellow skin, slanted eyes...then when you want to stand out, you're going to have to do some CRAZY stuff. This includes buying very loud clothing, getting crazy hairstyles, basically "creating" an image (this also takes $$). Thus you get groups like the gothic chicks in harajuku or those overly tan-scary girls. Factor in the homogenous society and you have the formula for craziness. I'm sure there are other factors I'm missing, but I've done a lot of reading on Japanese society (watched a few BBC documentaries too), and I've been able to corroborate a lot of the social observations firsthand. I will be back in Tokyo for the summer as well. It's something you just gotta see. Life is very different over there, fashion is just a small subset.

There's a lot of cool things about Japanese culture and it's great from the outside looking in. Still, when I was in the middle of it, I noticed some bad points too. People seem a lot more stressed out there and although everyone there is respectful and polite, it seems a little inauthentic. Just my observation.

PS If you want the best ramen, there's this stand in Shibuya that's awesome.

Edited by turbozed on Apr 4, 2006 at 02:49 AM

just came by to say:

popozao.

eom

It kinda just says "Hiro" and then "Ito." Hiro is a pretty common Japanese name. Ito is a pretty common Japanese last name. There's probably a good number of people walking around Japan with that name. What it has to do with jeans I'm curious about too.

Thanks for the site. It's pretty helpful (has pics too!). Still it's in Japanese and I don't really get a sense of proportion because I can't decipher it very well (I'd say I have 2nd grader Japanese-language skills hehe).

It'd be nice to have a Jeans database where people can get a look at Levis (as well as other designers) cuts and measurements, washes, etc. People could submit their own measurements and pics and everyone would have a good visual idea of how something would fit on them (especially helpful since a lot of people are buying stuff in the dark on the internet). Unfortunately, I don't have any technical knowledge to make this happen.

Anyone know if there's a thread or a webpage that gives you a description of all of Levi's cuts and styles? I'm a bit ignorant of subject and it'd be nice for people like me to get an idea of what people mean when they refer to the more obscure cuts. A site with measurement listings or pics would be great.

"pronunciation is more like he-ge (ge like gecko) theres no "ay" sound in the japanese language"

You're correct here. When English speakers learn Japanese, they traditionally treat anything with an "e" in romaji as an "Ay" sound (like saying the letter "A"). So when saying a word like "sake" they pronounce it like "sock-AY" which is a bit more correct than saying "sock-E.' Still, the "e" sound is more correctly a toned down version that sounds more like "eh" as in the name Edward.

This post has nothing to do with denim sorry

If it's pronounced "heegay" then the word smacks of Japanese origin as that is how you would pronounce it in japanese. This would make sense given the jeans culture there.

I just did a search on the Japanese word "hige" (ひげ) to find the meaning and it came up with:

髭 or 鬚 (I guess there's two kanji for it?) (n) moustache / beard / whiskers.

So there you go, it means whiskers in Japanese.

Interestingly (and perhaps completely unrelated) is that it also means "self-abasement / humility / self-depreciation" (卑下).

Thanks for asking the question! I was unsure of the origin/pronunciation too. Given the "heegay" information, it was relatively easy to piece the puzzle together.

Maybe you should've gotten the 30/34s instead. Most accounts of dry nudies say that the length will shrink by 1" to 1.5" after the first wash. You can counter this a bit by stretching them after the wash, but in the end you don't want to invest that much time (i'm assuming 6 months to a year) getting an nice fade and whiskers on your jean if they're going to be too short to wear eventually. With a 30/34 you could cuff (some people don't like the look) and wear until the first wash. Then you'll get an accurate idea of how much the jeans will shrink. After that you can hem it. Otherwise, you can gamble a bit and just hem it to where you'd like it and add an inch or so to the measurement to adjust for shrinkage.

I have them in 29/32 cuffed (I'm not too tall) and I'll admit that I wasn't too into the look much at first. But it's not so bad now and it's nice to rock the selvage (we did buy RRDS afterall!) and feel a bit some denim snobbery.

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I try to bring you the real. The silk lining is really nice, but not necessary, and I much prefer some of their other (not as blatantly logoed) designs, so I eschew the lining for the actual print. I love this one and wear it all the time, in the blue with gold print, (it actually has a distinct purple cast that doesn't show up):

http://www.thecast.com/pages/boutiquechandelier.htm

I actually had the zipper replaced with high quality heavy duty YKK, and am very happy with it.

And I just rewarded myself with this older design, in the faded wine color with the gold print (decided that I had too many black, grey and blue hoodies, and needed a serious color injection into my wardrobe. I have the green Spruce tiger fleece (You can see it in the WYWT thread), but this is less obtrusive for day to day use:

http://www.thecast.com/pages/boutiqueframehood.htm

Am thinking of putting a riri zipper on it...

--- Original message by LA Guy on Feb 23, 2006 11:46 PM