mtchfrnk

woah - those look like they were dipped in indigo...

That is always a distinct possibility when Bill is posting.

Here are my dead stock Converse Skidgrip CVOs about two months ago. I was only wearing the right one b/c of an ankle injury.

I will try to take some up-to-date comparison shots before I start wearing the left one too

Incidentally, shoeboxes used to be way better. This well-designed size conversion chart is a pretty cool "feature" to add to an otherwise disposable cardboard box.

Been at it for about a month. I'm enjoying it, but it's a chore sometimes. Much prefer Anna Karenina so far. Don't want to sound like a plebe, but I think this book might could use some editing down...

Mike--I've logged about 50 pps. Enjoying the heck out of it. I know I will enjoy returning to reread more slowly.

One immediate pleasure is getting insight into where your various internet handles come from--maybe others have figured it out, but I didn't know the significance of Sansome or of Deadgrass. No spoilers tho. Erryone gets to deduce that one for themselves.

Time for some good whiskey & denim history. Let's do this.

It's a functional period element...the strap would let you button yet keep it loose OR if you did have wider shoulders you could still button it.

Manual labor is tough on any piece of clothing and having a double chin strap just insures that the top button does not get ripped off

Yes, I know that people used to dress better, and that David Lynch didn't invent buttoning all the way up.

But it has never been specifically clear to me, even now, what exactly the chinstrap is designed for. It does certainly reinforce the top button. But were people really blowing out the top button that often? Sure, it can give you a little wiggle room in case you gain some neck-weight. But did that happen?

Understand, I'm looking for a definitive answer, not speculation. Like how we know that LS&Co and Jacob Davis patented riveted pants. I am looking for primary documentation.

But yes! You are both surely right! And since no one holds the patent on chinstraps, my unreasonably specific question will probably go unanswered.

EDIT: Amazing shirt Riff! How many people in this thread have one coming? Looking forward to the photos...

And to Eczerwonka and Happy Hooligan--thanks for taking a stab at my question. I realize my response here sounds defensive. That's because it is! I made myself sound like a know-nothing in the original question, and I'm not a know-nothing, so I came back a little strong in re: your answers. I am apparently kind of insecure sometimes. Sorry about that!

Was directed to another source of mid-century photos by Archival Clothing's twitter.

I was hoping photos of the Hanford Site, this government town funded by the Manhattan Project, would be a mint of old denim photos. Unfortunately so far I've only found a few blue jeans shots in the flickr stream. There are probably more at the official website, but I haven't had a ton of time to look through--and navigation there isn't too user friendly.

The denim pickings are slim but there're plenty of VERY interesting shots of nuke-era American culture. You should browse through the flickr site for those if nothing else. There are also lots of great leather jackets, boots, bib overalls, and chino workpants. And blackface. Can't forget the blackface.

So here's what I've found. Hopefully some other, more talented photo-pickers can find some gems at the .gov site.

February 1944 Hanford Workers

CAFETERIA SCENE - HANFORD, CIRCA 1944

RECREATION HALL - BILLIARDS

RECREATION AT CAMP HANFORD

1952 HAMTC MINSTREL SHOW

1953 300 AREA LABS - PENCILS AND BADGES, RADIATION SIGNS [and herringbone twill -ed.]

MANAGERS MEETING WITH JAPANESE VISITORS [No denim, plenty of WTF -ed.]

Note: there are also lots of pretty girls. I guess government schmoes really pulled the pretty ones back then?

AC is a really great blog, BTW, though it is disturbingly dismissive of vintage denim. How dare they so much as imply that my obsession is silly. HOW DARE THEY.

Whenever I see a chinstrap on a kid on TV, I take it for granted it's J Crew. J Crew seems to be the baseline signifier of semi-stylish teen on tv.

Either that or GAP. I believe there are even some pictures in this thread of nippers wearing the big G.

This brings up a question that is, as far as I know, still unanswered: what specifically is the chinstrap supposed to do? Make really, REALLY sure the top button doesn't come undone? I guess maybe if you have a super-thick workingman's neck then this could be important?

Maybe it's just supposed to look cool?

Personally I wear my chinstraps buttoned back. I do not let it all hang out like they do on the TV. The TV and I will just have to disagree on that one.

most of them are on or close to railroad tracks, which i use to get around without having to deal with fences / walls

Is there a rail-to-trail movement up there? On the east coast a lot of old railroad tracks are converted into hiking/jogging/mountain biking trails. It's a cool reduce/reuse strategy, but I bet it wouldn't be good for your photography--too many white folk in jogging shorts.

Anyone on here sport a Lee 91-B? In pictures this is my favorite denim jacket, but I've never actually seen one in person--much less seen one on a person, being worn.

Then we drove (carefully) back to the cabin and had a nice little campfire. Gotta love glowing embers.

The next day I went exploring and made some friends.

I didn't know millipedes came this big, this far north.

Bufo Americanus, perhaps the world's best amphibian. American [toad] and proud of it.

And then we went back to NYC which, as great as it is, still smells like hot trash. I would much prefer to smell fermenting grains all day. Oh well.

Didn't get these organized until just now.

I got out of the city for my older bro's bachelor party:

I was too drunk to take photos the first night. But the next day, after an aggressive boot-and-rally campaign, we went to the beautiful Finger Lakes Distilling showroom.

It was full of barrels,

Brown liquor,

Bubbling fermentation tanks,

And dead bugs.

We got to sample straight from the barrels,

And have dinner with Brian McKenzie, the President of Finger Lakes Distilling, and Thomas Earl McKenzie, the Master Distiller. (They are not related).

Thomas Earl's Family has been distilling booze for 100 years. He's the first of them to do so legally. AWESOME. This is TE:

And this is Brian, looking presidential:

Everything we sipped was great. Their rye whiskey, in its second batch, was really phenomenal. We left with twelve bottles of it.

Since we all seem to be fans of whiskey, I am going to post a link to my blog, where I talk about a phenomenal visit I made to Finger Lakes Distilling.

Link.

Then, the more time that passed and the more pictures that were posted, the more it has started to sound like a reasonable idea.

I am so with you on this one. I have crossed over.

Now that I think of it, I'm still receiving worker's comp checks form an ankle broken on the job...perhaps Chartis/AIG Catastrophic Injury Insurance will buy me a new pair of jeans?

Is there an appropriate way to publicize an FS thread? Besides putting it in your signature?

SPECIAL OFFER.

Whoever buys the Dickie's jeans will get my year-old Samurai 710s as a bonus.

I wore these jeans constantly as a manual laborer in NYC. I machine washed them, they shrank, and this is not the fit I'm looking for. Bummer for me. For you, not a bummer: a pair of great jeans with authentic fades. FREE WITH PURCHASE OF JEANS BELOW.

____

These appear to be part of Dickie's 1922 Workwear brand, although I have only ever seen the khaki component of that collection.

I don't know when or where or if these will be available for sale. They are pretty darn special.

As such I am asking for $200 shipped in the US. Outside the US may be extra.

These are a wide-leg workwear cut. BiG measurements:

waist: 33.5" (16 3/4" x 2)

front rise: 10"

back rise: 13"

upper thigh: 12"

knee: 9 3/4"

leg opening: 9 1/2"

inseam: 32.5"

Pictures:

Front shot:

Nice two-tone stitching

Hardware

Great "union made" label

Felled inseam

Selvedge outseam

Back shot; nice single-stitched arcuates

Comes with tags: From left, envelope with spare hardware (sealed & unopened), raw denim info tag, Williamson Dickie 1922 brand tag.

Helpful information.

Professional product photos can be seen here.

Help me get these great jeans out of my pink-tiled bathroom and onto your legs!

Just got this email from amazon.com:

"The item(s) listed below will actually ship sooner than we originally expected:

Michael Harris "Jeans of the Old West"

Previous estimated arrival date: September 08 2010 - September 16 2010

New estimated arrival date: August 18 2010"

Why thank you amazon.com. That is extremely awesome.

One of the most interesting bits of information I picked up from the book is that miners did not like to wear suspenders. If they needed help holding up their jeans they used a piece of rope as a crude belt. That's a look we should try to revive.

Not a bad idea. I'm for anything that encourages people to learn fun knots.

Friction hitch knots would be especially useful in this application. Trucker's hitch could be good too.

Here are some pics of some cans that Mike has dug up as well. He believes these to be from the 1880s.

The colors are so rich on these things. Why was shit so much cooler back then?

Poisonous chemicals, probably

Cross-post from samurai thread.

And here are my s710xx. Worn ~10 months.

Knee repair. I like when wear wraps around the whole leg.

Honeycomb wearing through on the reverse. That's always fun.

Washed once during first 8 months. Then I decided the wear was satisfactory, and that it was time to turn them into light-blue jeans. Since then they've been machine-washed ~4 times.

So, I've only been posting for a couple months, and I don't know that everyone will agree with this, but I think I've noticed a kind of maturation in taste over the time I've been around. Certainly my taste has matured a lot with the influence of all you very tasteful folks. But generally I'm noticing things like: jokes about stereotypical sufuers always sizing down 2; a subtle (but I think noticeable) increased interest in wider jeans; a certain disbelief expressed at the super duper contrasty fades people achieve. (I'm sure this stuff has been going on for longer than just a few months; that's just how long I've been reading.)

I love my jeans unconditionally, but now that I have some actual knowledge about how blue jeans "work," I know that I'd prefer a pair that weren't always chewing on my nuts. I do not need my jeans to turn my cellphone off for me because the pockets are so tight. I will definitely be more moderate from here on out. And I look forward to machine washing these into submission, now that I have foundational fades laid in.

And here are my s710xx. Worn ~10 months.

Knee repair. I like when wear wraps around the whole leg.

Honeycomb wearing through on the reverse. That's always fun.

Washed once during first 8 months. Then I decided the wear was satisfactory, and that it was time to turn them into light-blue jeans. Since then they've been machine-washed ~4 times.

Ye gods! Those are russet service shoes? I'm guessing from the aged uppers / pristine soles that they are deadstock? Absolutely beautiful.

Full frontal. Sorry about the size, but these need to be large.

So the fly button buttons inward? I don't think I've ever seen that before! I guess this would prevent it from catching on the bucket full of ore that you are carrying to the surface...very cool.

Xpost ROY thread.

And looking so clean in both of them. Mustache suits you.

I think that William's choice to use potatoes for this little part of Tender really "fits" with the feeling of the whole collection, in a couple of interesting ways. So I am going to share a few facts about potatoes.

First of all, I think that part of Tender Co's appeal is the sensation of finding beauty in unexpected places. Through Tender (and this thread), we've learned about many beautiful processes--green indigo oxidizing to blue; animal flesh turning into leather; "lost-wax" metalcasting...the list goes on. I was not expecting to see these amazing things here. Unexpected beauty!

To the same end, did you know that potato flowers are really pretty?

And that inside, potatoes have a beautiful, ghost-like vascular system?

I also like that Tender Co has an organic, "back-to-the-land" feeling--without being hippy-dippy or (as we say in the US) crunchy. Again, for example, the leathergoods--I think we are supposed to remember that the leather came from an animal.

The potato is such an earthy, primitive tool to use. Did you know that when potatoes first came to Europe from the New World, people thought they would grow into nasty little poisonous animals? (In the same superstitious way that they thought cotton came from "vegetable sheep," and that tomatoes were poisonous "devil apples.")

It is easy to see why--they grow legs!

And if you let a potato grow legs, it does in fact become poisonous. (Like many new-world veggies including tomatoes, chilies, and tobacco, it's in the "deadly nightshade" family). Some varieties even grow (very very) poisonous berries, which look like black cherry tomatoes:

And finally, I have learned a lot about vegetable dyes from this thread. I think it's a funny coincidence that Williams' indigo-dyed potato piece ends up looking like a blue potato:

These potatoes have a mutation which makes their cells produce anthocyanins, a common kind of plant-pigment which can look blue, purple, or red, depending on how acidic their environment is. Some of you may remember seeing a demonstration of this in grade school chemistry class: your teacher would have a jug of purple liquid (red cabbage juice) and he'd pour in some vinegar. It would suddenly, magically turn from purple to blue from the added acid. Red cabbages are also colored with anthocyanins.

On top of changing color, anthocyanins are very water-soluble, so they don't make good dyes. Southwestern native americans found a different way to obtain red and purple plant dyes: they would dry and grind up amaranth flowers. Hopi indians especially used amaranth to color their rugs and blankets. Amaranth is colored with a pigment called betalain, which is named after the beetroot. Anyone who has cooked with beets will recognize that beet juice is a VERY effective dye.

So as a way to tie all this together--I know that this has nothing to do with blue jeans. But one of the coolest things about Tender Co. is that it is about more than just the jeans. I think so anyways!