rodeo bill

3 hours ago, Dr_Heech said:

Gorgeous! lovely how the sideways-cut yoke has a different tone from the up-and-down cut front panels, and ruches them in along the seam.

2 hours ago, AlientoyWorkmachine said:

122 eh? 

all in good time!

Ulysse Nardin on a new natural cork strap, Tender 122

A lovely photo from a great friend of the brand, with his type 960 double breasted jacket and the best worn pair of 130Ps I’ve seen. Thanks Marc!

 prescient

Is that a tie-front shirt?! Lovely album

On 3/3/2023 at 3:45 PM, Duke Mantee said:

Customer wanted me to use an old Tender buckle on the chocolate strap

It's beautiful, but the buckle's upside down! I've never tried it this way up,  maybe it'd work really nicely. Lovely job though, and great to see a unique take on this buckle :-)

16 hours ago, julian-wolf said:

@rodeo bill Really like the look of the new Wide Face shirt

From the photos, it looks like a bit of a wider / shorter fit, similar to the Bridge Pocket shirt. Is there any truth to that, or just a bit of wishful thinking on my end?

Thanks so much for this Julian! The Wide Face shirt is a really nice one, I think it'll work well for you. It's not quite as wide as the Bridge Pocket Shirt, but a similar feel. The sleeves are a little longer. Here are a couple of photos (size 3, and I'm wearing a T-shirt underneath)- flat to show the proportions, and with the cuffs rolled back as I wear it myself (I have short arms and like cuffs on my wrist):

12 hours ago, AlientoyWorkmachine said:

What fit this time @rodeo bill ?

something new! but as far as can be seen in this photo, 132. I'm hoping to get these into production later in the Spring- more then

gorgeous @merzbot! Thank you.

I'm so sorry for the lack of posts in the last few weeks, the end of the year was very busy, and I've had a couple of weeks off. Happy new year and I hope everyone had a lovely holidays. 

To get them on the record, a new pair for 2023, now about a month old. More as things progress:

@julian-wolf thank you so much, and I'm really pleased you're enjoying your Bridge Pocket shirt- as you say it's wider and shorter than some other styles (all the fabrics are pretty much the same) and wears really nicely oversized. I'd love to see photos!

@AlientoyWorkmachine and @mondo I'm delighted your 129s are wearing well, this is so great to hear, and AW your's are looking lovely. I dug my own 129s out recently- they're a bit tight on me at the moment, but it's a great fit. Maybe they'll get some more time in the new year.

For now, though, most of AW22 is in and arriving with stockists. There's a new coat style, the 953 Double Breasted Split Back Coat, in a particularly lovely fabric:

here's a (beautifully laid out, as always) page from The Complete Imbiber 5, from 1961 (worth seeking out! lovely books about booze), mentioning the etymology of the word grog. Hence the development and name of this horizontally ribbed (gross grain) fabric on a fine ecru cotton warp with a fat natural Herdwick wool weft.

here is is on the loom:

and here it is in a coat, dyed with chlorophyll:

On 10/3/2022 at 11:30 AM, AnOldFolkSong said:

@rodeo billHave you considered applying for a royal warrant?

Thanks for this, and to be honest, no I haven't. I do like the ceremony and tradition in seeing warrants on things (and when I spent time in Henry Poole, on Savile Row, it was exciting seeing stuff made for the royal family, and the warrant shield up on the wall), but I'm not sure that I'd want Tender to be a current part of that world. More to the point, though, I'm not sure my things would be relevant to, or suitable for, a royal warrant- I believe warrants are issued to manufacturers, more than brands or designers. But thank you, it's a lovely suggestion! 

In the meantime, I've been wearing my Bold Indigo Weaver's Blanket Stripe trews daily for the last few months, and generally over the past 3? years or so, and I realised today how much the bias fabric has shaped and softened. They're slow faders, but the different twill patterns in the stripes (alternating right hand, broken, left hand, and plain weave) have really taken on a lot of character:

In other news, we've just set up a mailing list for a newsletter that I'll send out every now and again. I'm planning to write a bit about design processes that go into specific garments, and be able to bridge across styles from different seasons that we have in stock on the Tender Stores. A lot of attention goes on new things, but a nice part of having a site where old stock sits alongside new styles is that you can see connections between different productions, and different garments. 

If anyone fancies signing up you can click https://www.tenderstores.com/?subscribe=display or go to tenderstores.com and scroll down to the footer where there's a 'Mailing List' button.

On 9/4/2022 at 9:54 PM, julian-wolf said:

Hey @rodeo bill—I saw your post on Instagram featuring the yoke pocket shirt in the cotton / mohair fabric, which seems like a really great combination. Will something like this be getting released eventually, or was this just a one-off?

Thanks a lot @julian-wolf. I've had a couple of enquiries about this shirt, I should have been more careful! This was an option in the original AW19 production, but I'm afraid I don't have any left in stock. I do have a very nice 456 Janus Shirt in the same fabric (and the same fit, just different pocket layout), and I have a couple of other fabrics in stock in the Yoke Pocket Shirt, but I'm not planning to remake this exact version I'm afraid. Sorry not to be able to help more, and thanks again.

you could also be thinking of the 'Student' line? This might be better in the Evisu Is Still Loved thread

I have it back! with new mainspring, gaskets, and crystal. The power reserve tested at nearly 50hrs, which is way better than I’ve had recently. Couldn’t be happier with the service from Ray at watchguy.co.uk and all’s working well so far.
With Tender 132s being packed for Japanese restocks:

thanks for this @Toegun, I'm afraid I don't have any more shorts coming through this year. The 140 shorts are really lovely, but they do come up quite slim, and vary a bit by fabric. Would you mind emailing me to let me know which version(s) you're interested in? Then I'll give you full measurements with pleasure. Thanks again!

no denim (yet) but I took my 1968 Oyster Date in for a service and a new mainspring at a local place, WatchGuy. I knew someone who apprenticed there and their work looks good to me. My watch should be ready to collect next week, but I really like that they post full movement photos on their site while the watch is being worked on, with a passworded link to full updates for the owner. They've had it for 3 weeks and the turnaround is a month. I'll post photos with denim when I have it back, but in the meantime here's how it looks at the moment:

Thanks for this @Georg and that sounds great! Of course not sacrilegious, I love it when people dye or adapt Tender garments, it makes them all the more special. Natural blues are a bit tricky- indigo is a fun process to try and you can find kits online, but if you prefer something simpler then I always fine Dylon home dye kits which you do in the washing machine to work very well. In any case your shirt is 100% cotton, as is the sewing thread, so you should find that it dyes very well. Please post some pictures if you decide to give it a go!

Thanks for this @Georg! Lovely to see this shirt again- there weren't many made. It's from Autumn/Winter 2014 and it's made from the same cotton calico as Butterfly Shirts and various others. This particular version was garment-bleached, in an attempt to make it white rather than ecru, although I seem to remember it didn't work terribly well!

The idea of this shirt (and its companions the 980 jacket and 985 double breasted overcoat (which I still have in stock- it's a really special garment) was to form the angled shoulder by darting the fabric from the shoulder to the neck, with a wide tuck taken out at the shoulder angling to a smaller one at the neck. The front and back are cut from a single long strip of fabric and the front placket and back inlay are the same selvage line. Because the front plackets overlap (where they button up) the back inlay has be extra wide to balance it, and this inlay is sewn down, forming the 'spine' that you see on the back of the shirt.

Here's the page from the linebook that I made at the time:

On 7/25/2022 at 5:42 PM, Thanks_M8 said:

@rodeo bill have you ever used british denim in your clothes?

Thanks for this. The standard selvage denim for jeans is Japanese (woven to my spec), but all other fabrics are woven in the UK. There have been various different indigo cotton fabrics, more or less denim, used for different garments over the years. I'm trying to add more fabric stories to the website when I have time, but there are quite a few listed if you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the homepage, such as Weaver's Blanket Denim which switches from left hand twill to right hand twill and back in very wide bands, so that most garments will have a random twill change somewhere on them.

There was a lightweight 10oz Cross Weave denim (woven sideways with an indigo weft on an ecru warp) which I did jeans in as well as shirts, but I only have a single pair (129s, size 6) left of. The main British-woven denim I've made jeans from, though, is the very heavy 19oz Cross Weave Denim, which I have in a good range of jeans and some coats where the indigo weft is contrasted with stripes of Ryeland wool.

All the British indigo fabrics are woven with the same cotton indigo yarn which the Japanese denim is woven with, from the same Japanese spinners. A lot the character of a fabric is in the yarn, especially with indigo, and it's a really special one (ring spun, rope dyed 25 dips), so the British fabrics will fade just as nicely as the Japanese selvage.

thanks for this @Denimstoyevsky. Hemmed to a 31" inseam you're going to lose some of the taper, so 130 will be closer to 8" and 132 will be more like 9". Other than the leg taper 130 and 132 are very similar, although there's a bit more room in the seat of 132s (it doesn't come out in measurements, but it's to do with the way the hips and yoke are cut). I hope that makes sense, please do email me or let me know here if you need more info.

Edit- just seen your query about size 2. There's 2" between sizes, and size 2 is ~31" waist