Cold Summer

Flat Head hickory stripe shirt, Hollows belt, Flat Head 3003xx jeans, Viberg Service Boots. The jeans are about 5 months of real wear time and just had their first wash since I started wearing them. Also, the yellow Porsche Cayman is my dad's car, and of course my MX73 Cressida is on the right.

Exactly. Now it's my wife who's always telling me I should do Denim YouTube because I'd be good at it, but the last thing I'd ever do is jump through hoops trying to make money off of it. I have a stable job that pays the bills and all that, so I just view the whole denim thing as a hobby that I share with other people because I enjoy it. It frustrates me that YouTube people I like, even, often seem to admit that they feel like the algorithm pushes them this way or that, and they don't feel like they have the freedom to do what they really want because those videos don't get views.

Those are all great points. Makes me wonder if part of the issue is that, in general, most active users have migrated to other platforms like TikTok and Instagram is itself somewhat passe. For that matter, I'm surprised by how much YouTube content there is related to the denim hobby, at this point - ten years ago I contemplated the idea of starting a denim-based YouTube channel, but I figured it would never go anywhere. Turns out I might've been wrong on that account.

I've been thinking some about the subject of Instagram's place in driving the denim hobby, for lack of a better term. Back in The Day of the mid-2000s-mid-2010s, SuFu and similar forums were the center of denim nerd community outside Japan, plus Reddit and some blogs like Indigo Shrimp, Raw Denim/Heddels, and Denimhunters. But by the mid-2010s things had shifted dramatically toward Instagram. There was a big rise in the "relaxed tapered" fits, lots of guys wearing those jeans with really long flannels and Red Wing Iron Rangers or moc toe boots, Snake Oil Provisions being a big tastemaker, those stupid "cuff check" posts, and all that. But this was reflected much more on IG than SuFu. I initially started doing Instagram in about 2015 or so and posted on it through about 2017, deleted my account for a bit, and started another one that's been around since about August 2018. When I go back to old posts from early on, I'd get easily 100+ likes, and tons of comments on everything I posted. But in the last two years or so, when I've had periods where I'm much more active with regularly posting fit pics and stuff, the level of engagement is far lower. I have a pretty good follower count of over 800, but little interaction on my posts. I don't follow a ton of people and like/interact with a pretty small number of posts on there, so it's possible the algorithm is just punishing me for being insufficiently enslaved to their platform. Now I don't really care much about IG as a popularity contest, it doesn't really matter to me whether I get a million likes or ten, to me it's just another platform for sharing something about a hobby of mine and I don't derive much satisfaction in particular from it. But I am starting to wonder: does this suggest that Instagram, as a center of raw denim/Amekaji/vintage Americana style/etc., is in decline or dying? Has it moved somewhere else? It sure doesn't seem like raw denim is dying, there's plenty of interest and arguably more awareness than ever when you've got guys like primarily-automotive YouTube guy James Pumphrey making pretty good videos about the history of jeans and at least one decent store in most major American cities now. My gut feeling is that raw denim has been "de-nerdified," more people than ever are aware of it and have some level of interest in it, but a smaller percentage of those guys are hardcore fans of the sort who would post on a forum like SuFu. I could certainly be wrong about that, though. I also suspect there's some Big Tech fatigue involved in all this, as a lot of people are tired of social media and dropping out. Or maybe they've all just migrated to TikTok or something. I've never used TikTok and never will, so this is a total blind spot to me.

I much prefer electric stoves but it's entirely because they're so easy to keep clean, just wipe down the flat surface and you're done. Cleaning my gas stove is annoying and time consuming that I don't even care if it cooks better or not.

Freenote short sleeve, Buzz Rickson original spec chinos, Viberg 2030 Service Boots.

Ebbets cap, Lone Flag tee, Hollows belt, Flat Head 3003xx, 70s Chucks. One of my trademark outfits, I guess.

JCrew Short Sleeve, Hollows belt, Flat Head key holder, Buzz Rickson Original Spec chinos, Wesco 7500 boots. I got sunburnted at a car show yesterday, so I look even goofier than usual, hopefully the wacky shirt distracts a bit.

It wouldn't be a big deal if makers like Oak Street were just transparent about doing this stuff. It's the deception and obfuscation that makes me never want to buy products from these sorts of brands.

Freenote Cloth shirt, Hollows belt, TCB Late S40s jeans, John Lofgren Steadfast boots. A rare Flat Headless fit for me.

3Sixteen crosscut shirt, Sid Mashburn belt, Stevenson trousers, Viberg Service Boots.

Some nice fades from Inoue-san's Late S40s jeans on IG. Makes me excited to keep wearing mine, though I've mostly been in my TFH 3003xx lately. https://www.instagram.com/p/DM2txoMT550/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MWN4dTluYWZvOW8xcw==

Because "AI" is utopian marketing fluff for large language modeling and (thankfully) not an actual artificial intelligence, and I have a very low opinion of the whole thing in general. After I wrote that post, it occurred to me that someone might also respond that such an idea isn't new and 20 years ago you could photoshop your fades to cheat at a denim competition/general clout for posting pictures online, which is quite true, but the difficulty of doing this (especially convincingly) is a lot higher than telling ChatGPT to Enhance The Fades. Actually now I'm wondering if there have been any documented cases of somebody being found out for faking/photoshopping fades, whether for a contest or anything else. I can't remember hearing of that happening, but perhaps I missed it.

Thanks! I wrote more about it in this post in the Nice Things thread (and some more if you scroll down.) It makes for a nice backdrop for my WAYWT photos, in addition to being a pretty sweet ride.

Flat Head western short sleeve, Flat Head 3003xx, New Balance.