rodeo bill

A couple of lovely outfits from an old friend of the brand, with an octave mandolin, in his 916 1-1/2 breasted Common Coat in Khaki dyed Herdwick Check Casement and 122 hadal brown Pleat Back Trousers in corresponding Herdwick Stripe Casement. Then below with a Weaver's Stock shirt home-dyed green and an 886 Stock in Barge Blue Flannel. I love how the herdwick yarn pulls the cotton casement in after dyeing, giving a quilted effect.

Thank you! Yes indeed this is Levant Red in the foreground (bright red Shetland and a natural white yarn), and the background is Agate Blue (dark blue and natural black yarn): For reference size 3 chest is 21" not including the gussets, and the full length is 27". Please just email me if you'd like full measurements.

Stunning photos! and jeans are looking beautiful. I got bitten by a big dog once (not sure what kind), hurt like hell and drew blood but just kind of mangled the fabric, didn't make as nice of a tear as yours. I hope you've recovered well. It's been a long time since some in depth factory photos, here's some from a woollen spinning factory, in preparation for the yarn that went into AW24 Tacuinum Pullovers and Cardigans, and Paper Boat hats. These photos are of "woollen" spinning, as opposed to "worsted" spinning. Worsted spinning is a more refined process where the fibres are made to lie more smoothly, and is typically used for worsted suit fabrics, where as woollen spinning (two Ls!) gives a fluffier yarn more normally used for knitwear or coarser tweed woven fabrics. For these Shetland-type yarns a slightly uneven colour is preferable, so a blend of different coloured fibres are used. The wool fibre is dyed under pressure, which could also damage finished yarn, so it's better to do the dyeing right at the beginning. The yarn designer has a library of colours: what was going through during my visit was a greenish tweed yarn with flecks of other colours. Even though the yarn will end up looking pretty classic, seeing the fibre mix is an eyeopener: The yarn is all mixed together in a big barrow, so that the colours are randomly dispersed. They're then fed up into the long carding process: the wool fluff is pulled through a succession of spiked rollers, in a stream, and as they go through the fibres start to lay inline with each other: until eventually the stream of fibre has enough body to be pulled off the carding rollers into a sort of loose scarf called a sliver: here's a closeup: the sliver gets pulled around a corner and flattened out again, which continues to straighten the fibres through another length of the room, until it's ready to be separated, like this: the stream of fibres is run through slightly tacky, static-charged rubber belts, which pull between sharply defined metal grooves, cutting the stream into ~1" wide sections. In the picture above, my guide has pulled out on of these sections- you can see that it's only barely holding together. however: Spinning itself will happen later. For now the narrow slivers are gently wound up onto cones, so that they can be put into the spinning process. Here are a couple more pictures- at this stage what looks like yarn is still just sliver under very slight tension. The brown rollers are also slightly tacky, which helps everything move through, but these run quite slow and at very carefully controlled tension to avoid snapping. At this point we'll switch over to a blend of natural undyed British wool, which is actually much closer to what I ended up using, but is less dramatic in the blending: these wrapped slivers are moved over into the spinning room, where they are set up over vertical spinning cones, to put twist into the slivers, under a higher tension, and create usable yarn: this is ringspun yarn, and that little loop in the wire over the pink cone top is the ring which the yarn is spun through, bouncing it around and giving it surface character. Now I'd originally enquired about spinning a blended natural grey with a blended blue- these yarns with this result: But while it's a beautiful thing it seemed a bit anticlimactic and subdued, so in the end I made a 2-ply yarn combined of a pure bright colour and a pure natural colour. Here are the results:

@chicotetotal fantastic! happy travels

Late 90s early Italian production T-shirt, my first evisu aged about 14, now my son’s pyjamas. Check out the twist!

Thank you! and indeed! These are already out there, the second set of Elephant Ear backpacks, satchels, and pouches- these in dyed canvas for SS24. They came out beautifully. But since you mention it, one of the things bubbling away at the moment is a considerable expansion of this project, into a full new brand designed and produced by me and my good friend (and ex-student from a long time ago), Robert Newman of Middle Distance. Working sits outside our own brands, and is looking really exciting- it's a coming together of my work with Tender and Rob's with Middle Distance and at technical and street-focussed places including Massimo Osti Studio, Stone Island, Maharishi and Supreme. More to come over the next few months, we're in fairly early stages, but there's a little more to see at @working.clothing

Sorry for the long silence- personal and work life have been extremely busy. Reopening the Stores is going to be later than I'd hoped, aiming for end of September but it may spill over into early October. However, AW24 production is coming through nicely, and going to be a really good one. I'm in the UK at the moment taking care of that, and tidying up some personal things. An early customer, Steven Ramm, contacted me recently about finding a new pair of 129s to replace the pair that he bought a decade ago. He's now the owner of some Mars Black dyed ones, here are his 10 year old logwoods: "I have a new digital back for my Hasselblad 500 c/m and this was its first outing, so I was just getting to grips with it. Maybe that's why the shot of the front of the jeans isn't sharp! Not really sure how that happened!" The front shot's my favourite 🙂

Many thanks for this, those Tshirts were indeed by Dorrit Dekk, an old family friend who died in 2014, a few years after doing the drawings for me. They were based on descriptions in Jorge Luis Borges' Book of Imaginary Beings. I have the originals, and when I was packing up the studio a few weeks ago I found some of the original set of Tshirts, I'll reexamine and may get them up on the Stores when we reopen (feel free to email me if you'd like more information). Dorrit drew these particular illustrations for these Tshirts, specially, so there aren't any prints available. I also did a series of mugs, which were really nice. Here are a few photos:

getting to the end of a clear out, a couple of cheapies that might be of interest: NOS Evisu Tailor cufflinks, made in England for the Evisu Savile Row shop, from donut buttons with brass flip backs. £10 plus post. NOS Cat's Paw heels, US size 10-11. Also £10 + post

^thank you so much for this @JDelage, I'd love to visit the Pacific NW, looking forward to seeing a lot more of the States all over. To answer various people's kind questions, all my UK suppliers are going strong and happy to keep working with me so at least initially production will remain unchanged and I'll be back regularly to keep on top of things. I am looking forward to seeing what new opportunities arise, however, so I hope I’ll be in the nice position of only making positive changes, as and when I can. In the meantime, I had another nice email in response to the most recent newsletter that went out, about Butterfly shirts and the new Weaver's Stock version of this design. The question was: "what’s the difference between a true cuff and a false cuff? I’ve heard that term elsewhere, but am not sure what it means. Here's my response, which might be of interest here too? Not sure if this is what other people mean by a false cuff, but I mean a cuff that is actually just a facing laid on top of the end of the sleeve panels. It’s what’s on all the Tender shirts you’ve had: A classic cuff, however, is added onto the end of the sleeve panels, and it’s this that I’ve done for the first time with the new Weaver’s Stock shirts: The true cuff just feels a bit more formal and elegant, while the false cuff is more workwear-inspired and a lot more idiosyncratic. I especially like how the fabric direction of the cuff (warp side-to-side) pulls against the sleeve (warp up and down), when the garment is dyed or washed.

Thank you all so much! And apologies for the lack of posts here recently, there's been an awful lot going on. We are indeed moving to the US permanently (or at least for the foreseeable future), to a smallish town just west of Philadelphia. We have family and friends in the area, and it's good timing personally. A big change for the business, and I have a lot to figure out over the coming weeks and months. At least for the time being there are no plans to change the current UK production, but I'm also excited to see what new opportunities come along. I'll be taking a couple of months off while stock crosses the Atlantic, so will try to be a bit more active with wear photos etc. ha! quite right, we're going to have a hot welcome.

sounds lovely. Is this is photogram bandana? what's the dye and how did it come out?! hope you enjoy the time off work

^ I remember seeing a pair of these where the pocket patch stitching had come undone. From the outside it's blank rough-out leather, but underneath it was a standard Evisu Godhead patch, turned over and cut in half! I liked the make-do attitude. Lovely jeans, in any case

seconded @JDelage, @merzbotI'd love to see it!

^thanks, I know those two are special ones. I'd much rather sell here- they've been in a box for a decade, they deserve to be enjoyed!

SOLD April 18th Having a clearout of magazines: Free & Easy, Lightning, McCoys, Evisu, Popeye, 2nd etc. I have these on eBay for £100 starting price for the lot, but open to offers here, I'd like them to go to a good home. Some edge turndowns etc but basically as new. Please let me know if any questions.

The Ry Cooder soundtrack stands up very well as an album, I think, and the dialogue snippets really hold it together.

lovely to see all these jeans @merzbot @irual @bartlebyyphonics, fading twisting and repairs all looking great. Really good to see a pair of hadal jeans wearing in, too- please keep us posted. Here are my 12oz Cross Weave 136s. I get such a kick out of seeing the right-hand twist on a left hand twill fabric cut sideways 🙂

Indeed! I really like this fabric too, and it's particularly interesting how it takes the darker dyes, which make the colour variation much more subtle. I'll have one more variation in this fabric over the next few weeks, but I'm afraid none going to EU stockist this time. Here are some closeups of the 'rough' logwood and hadal purple dyed versions. The rough logwood was a test using a mix of old more coarsely ground logwood powder, it didn't dye as evenly as regular logwood (particularly the newest batch of black logwood which came out beautifully dark and clean) but I think works really well on this fabric, which is slightly coarser and heavier, and in this style, which works best as an overshirt/light jacket.

A new project: penknives, made in England on a brass skeleton with nickel bolsters at each end, a carbon steel blade and scales cut from pear wood from a tree in our garden. Here are some pictures of the making process, at a three-person factory. Here's the timber for the scales (sides of the knife handle), left over from some work done on a ~250 year old pear tree in our garden, that was splitting. The timber was seasoned over four years in a dry woodshed, and then inside for the last year, to stabilise it. The first thing to do is to cut it down to size, on a band saw, first into a thin flat slice, and then into individual bars for the scales: thin brass sheet skeleton pieces are then laid on top, and the scales are drilled through the plate, in the places where the rivets will be: A bolster is a metal piece at the junction between the blade an the handle of a knife. It strengthens the joint and smoothes the shape between the two materials. In kitchen knives it also covers the end grain of wooden scales, which could be unhygienic. In a pocket knife, I was a bit concerned about having sharp corners of wood exposed to knocks, so this knife has an additional bolster at the hilt end. These bolsters are pressed out of nickel, and are drilled through the skeleton as well, on either end of the pear wood scales, keeping everything lined up nice and tightly: here's the matching pair all lined up but not yet fastened together: The bolsters are now soldered in place, to hold everything properly aligned before it's all riveted: Next, the back spring is fitted. Pressed out of steel plate, it's drilled out and profiled to match the handle shape: the blade is a deadstock British Army pattern, made in Sheffield of a mid carbon content steel. Low carbon tarnishes less (stainless), but is relatively soft and doesn't hold a sharp edge well. Too high a carbon content and the blade can be brittle- it's very hard and doesn't blunten, but is difficult to sharpen and not really suitable for a general-purpose pocket knife like this: Here's the knife made up on long rivet pins, not yet fixed in place: but for now, the blade is taken back out, and a piece of steel the same thickness is inserted between the scales to stop anything bending, then the bolster and spring rivets are hammered into place the ends and sides of the scales now get the first, rough, sanding to shape them to the brass skeleton now the blade is slotted into place, and another rivet wire is fitted and snipped off The back of the knife is ground down so that it will all line up flat once it's riveted. At this point the blade hasn't been sharpened, so the following processes aren't quite as risky as they look! The snap of the spring can now be tested and the blade shape adjusted if necessary Now the blade rivet is hammered into place, and the scales are rounded off to match the shape of the nickel bolsters finally, the blade is factory-sharpened on a grindstone and the handle is printed, then it's finished! most knife handles would be sealed, but I preferred to leave the wood with just a light oiling- this way it will darken and take on indigo from jeans pockets, over time. I hope this has been interesting! It's been lovely for me to learn about a new craft, and fun to do a post about it- it's been a while, as most of the production techniques for clothing have been covered earlier in the thread. I've had my own knife a couple of months now, and it's looking lovely. Updates as it evolves.

lovely comparison photo! your 132s are certainly going to fit quite differently from the 129s. The denim is exactly the same spec and mill, although it will be from different batches. I expect the difference is in the washing that's gone into your 129s- both woad and Achilles' Heel are dyed relatively cool and gently rinsed, so they shrink a bit further with subsequent washing. When garments shrink the yarn gets denser as the fibres contract, and the weight/area increases which also makes the fabric feel harder. My guess is that the new jeans feel how the old jeans did, and they will feel how the old jeans do now after a few years. Alternatively there certainly could be some variation in the fabric. Details have evolved somewhat over the years- I note that your 129 side belt loops are the 'transition' length (!). Originally the side belt loops were extended and sewn through the yoke seam, however this caused a lot of broken needles, going though a lined belt loop and 4 thicknesses of denim in the seam, which also risked damaging the seam itself. For a while the side belt loops were longer than the front and back ones, sewn though a single thickness of denim, but more recently the belt loops have been matching lengths, and set closer to the side seam, to give more support to a belt at the sides, where it's most needed. Snob's thumb pockets haven't intentionally changed, although the side pocket mouth will be a bit bigger in your upsized 132s than in your 129s, which will make the thumb pocket look proportionally smaller. Again, though, it is possible that there's a bit of natural variation over the years between the two versions. Looking forward to see how the fit and dye works out for you on your 132s- Please do let us know.

Michael Stipe in something black overdyed, 1994, with Courtney Love. (Photo from a NYT long read about him, never been a fan but really interesting guy)

I'm sure I remember a few people alluding to their own home-made jeans projects, and I thought it would be cool to have a thread for jeans that people have made themselves. Doesn't matter how amateur they are, and failed attempt stories are welcome too. Home-made is always best:)