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Denim Blunders, Reflections and General Nonsense.


cmboland

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3 hours ago, bartlebyyphonics said:

I personally think the Japanese relation to American style is a very interesting aspect of this narrative; in terms of being faithful copies, a repetition of the same rather than the infinite spawning of micro-variations of difference [if you remember what was at stake in the K-Hole 'Youthmode' / normcore text I shared a while back...], but also a degree of Eastern romanticism/exoticism of the West rather than the other way round...

This is maybe the most fascinating facet of it all to me as well, at least since I came to Japanese denim - which was not my introduction to fashion. When considered against how American denim came to Japan in the first place and amongst the backdrop of the atomic bomb/WW2 etc. I've always felt like the whole thing is primed for some deep cultural psychology analysis. Maybe I don't understand the genesis of it all enough but it certainly can look a bit curious at the outset. 

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(david) marx's ametora looks like a hypebeast coffee table book but actually takes a deep and interesting turn at trying to nut out the intimate assemblages between murican colonialism and japanese post-ww2 trauma that gave rise to the fetishisation of levi's (and other dungaree-adjacent fashion, initially mostly military-issued stuff) and the subsequent rebellion by the japanese to one-up the yanks at their own game SPI. most fascinating for me was his digs into 1. the role of a small band of japanese entrepreneurs-collaborators who spent war time in exile in american military bases in southern china and who then in post-war time seized the monopoly in exporting american dry goods to japan (imagine this, japan got its first supplies of american denim from china — mind blown), kickstarting the slow process of its covetization as fashion item decades before white denim hunters such as christophe "mf" loiron inherited the role of middleman as buyers for lapin and other japanese vintage stores, and 2. the flip side of what bartles said re: eastern romanticism/exoticism of the west: japanese radical left's critique/demonization of american imperialism (the other side of the coin to slavish ivy obsession) that led to student protests (around same time and part of the global paris spring movements) and then ultimately the formation of the revolutionary japanese red army, some of whose members decided to leave japan (were they wearing 501s or had they disowned them on moral grounds? questions x2) and resettle in lebanon/the middle east to fight alongside the plo against america and israel. 

Edited by oomslokop
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Have you noticed that Zenmarket are offering credit.. i stuck £100 in my wallet last week to bid on some bike bits listed on Yahoo and ive slightly overspent because there was a free/not so free ¥5000 already there not sure if this is for everyone or just those perpetually lacking in willpower. :ph34r:

When i got the Zen receipt they quote Struggling for shopping ideas? ...why not view our blog for inspiration, wtf! is anyone such a rabid consumer that they actually 'struggle' to think what they will spend money on today :rolleyes:

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If anyone is interested in watching Japanese guys going around trying on vintage clothing (they have denim videos as well), I found this channel a decent watch


Pretty low key but lots of ideal fits for my personal taste, and how I aim to dress silhouette wise (loose/baggy/drape-y)

 

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^ I bought some of those shoe-tree thingamees for a pair of canvas Common Projects (gold size numbers had worn off, but the measurements checked out – or so I thought), and they do work well... not enough for me to be able to shoehorn myself into those particular kicks, though, as they seem flat across the arch as well as narrow. Probably why they only seem to have been around for one season...

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Back when i was 18 we were coming home from a rave, some of my friends still lived with their folks so we would always end up back at my house, it was a summer night/morning and the next door but one neighbour had left their massive (and much loved) yucca plant out on the patio so we thought it would be a brilliant idea to kidnap it... giggling like schoolgirls we carried it into our house, we cut off one of the leaves, wrote a ransom note on it and posted it through their letterbox :wacko::D again, we thought this was genius!

..anyhow the next afternoon when my then girlfriend (now wife) and i woke up, the plant only had a couple of leaves left and those had stuff written on them and they were pierced with earrings and draped in beads, fuck!? i couldn't return it but the neighbours had the ransom leaf.. it was obviously us, well it was us fuckheads or the elderly Mrs Miggins at number 144.. the dude who's plant it was (well his wife's) knocked on our door to ask if we had seen anyone stealing it.. my only choice was disposing of it but i didn't have a car or looking after it till the leaves grew back and returning it, that'll only take a week or two surely.. or surely not, one day the neighbour muscled his way into the house looking for it but i'd stashed it in a wardrobe.. anyhow a few months later there was no sign of new leaf growth so i put the sad looking thing back.

I'd forgotten all about this till my mrs reminded me of it last night... :)

Edited by Double 0 Soul
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3 hours ago, beautiful_FrEaK said:

Maybe an unpopular opinion (or maybe not).
This is the perfect example of these uber-slubby denims I find ugly

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I think it would only be an unpopular opinion on one other denim forum. Most of the world, when they wear jeans, and I think that carries into this forum, aren't so interested in fabric that looks like it's got a skin disease. I like to see some experiments myself but wherever the line is, these have crossed it. 

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@beautiful_FrEaK Do you know what brand those are? Just curious... 

On some level, I can understand the extreme slub that some brands are doing, and to some extent appreciate what they are capable of creating/making. I confess that I do have at least one pair of super-slub jeans, yet I don't really care for them. Far too gimmicky. I think TSG and PBJ do slub in best way possible. 

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I stopped wearing a pair of Oni for the exact reason demonstrated above. The slub just doesn't fade in an attractive / natural fashion. PBJ seem to have got the balance just right from the faded examples we've all seen.  My own pair of PBJ haven't really started showing much wear. 

I do have another of pair of Oni, the overdyed black /blue,  and so far so good they aren't showing signs of turning out to bad. 

 

Pair of well faded blue Oni for sale if anyone's interested. ......

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Yikes, that denim is ugly. Over-engineered slubby denim is susceptible to that sort of thing. The only really traditionally slubby denim I like is PBJ's original denim, used on the XX-003, 005, 013, etc. It's not too over the top.

I still think the absolute ugliest raw denim I've ever seen is the 3Sixteen 15 year anniversary denim, I do not like this kind of streaky-looking fabric at all.

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