Denim Blunders, Reflections and General Nonsense.

[unders]

BF mentioned this brand recently and, as a pizza addict, I love their tab:

Word Of Mouth jeans if anyone wishes to check them out. 
 

My favourite is probably the old EVIS tabs. Really no shits given in those days 

[Maynard Friedman]

Good stuff. How could I forget Gardener’s UEKI’S tab?

[indigoeagle]

1 hour ago, Double 0 Soul said:

Wouldn't you be better off with a jacket liner or quilted layer rather than a down vest?

Also a good idea.

 

But I like these "nano" down vests. You can wear them under a jeans jacket, too instance.

Just wondering, if some company has specialised on untreated jackets, i.e. no chemicals.
Perhaps no market for that.
 

[willi]

8 minutes ago, indigoeagle said:

Also a good idea.

 

But I like these "nano" down vests. You can wear them under a jeans jacket, too instance.

Just wondering, if some company has specialised on untreated jackets, i.e. no chemicals.
Perhaps no market for that.
 

I'm not sure about untreated synthetics, but melton wool might be a good alternative material for a warm vest if your priority is chemical free. I have a melton wool vest from Workers Co. Japan that I layer with a denim jacket in the winter.

[Double 0 Soul]

14 minutes ago, indigoeagle said:

 I like these "nano" down vests. You can wear them under a jeans jacket, too instance.

Just wondering, if some company has specialised on untreated jackets, i.e. no chemicals.
Perhaps no market for that.
 

Not sure about no chemicals.. Snow Peak subscribe to The Green Down Project and use recycled tent material if you can find something in their range.. i'm not sure it's all made in JP though

I've got the older version of this https://www.phdesigns.co.uk/wafer-ultima-down-vest

..from around 10yrs ago, 1000 fill, looks fat.. but isn't.. it weighs nothing, worn here with RMC Military sweat and M41001s

If you scoot back a few pages.. i'm wearing it in waywt..

[indigoeagle]

No mention on the site of any coating.

High quality products.

They also have Ventile Down Jackets. Pretty amazing.
https://www.phdesigns.co.uk/ventile-down-jackets

I think, traditionally ventile was not treated, but has been in recent years.

[indigoeagle]

Melton wool is a good idea.
Shearling vest should also work.

[willi]

Well, it's an excuse to post a photo of my melton vest from Workers, reproduced from the style of Willis and Geiger. I have a lot of fondness for this garment. The store that I bought it from is going out of business, and from what I can understand reading Japanese blogs, it's become very difficult to produce these kinds of items with the current economic situation. Melton, corduroy, and many other fabrics seem to be in real danger of falling out of an already niche market entirely. Hopefully I am wrong. I think there is something unique and especially beautiful about reproduction compared to vintage: sewing the accumulated cultural meaning back into the garment and putting it onto a new generation to write the next chapter.

I also get great reactions wearing this. "... Are you wearing a wool vest?". Why yes I am.

[Talan]

16 hours ago, Maynard Friedman said:

What do you think is the best back pocket tab? The Skull one springs to mind.

 

A Zen move from Warehouse.

 

[julian-wolf]

^ didn’t some of the Champloo SdA jeans do the same, too?

[beautiful_FrEaK]

I didn't know that fakes are now called "Fashion Reps" and it seems to be a big thing.

https://www.reddit.com/r/FashionReps/

Also saw some "repros" of the old Sugar Cane 1955 model...
https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=736763744157

[LazyS]

^ Is it the arcs? How can you tell?

[beautiful_FrEaK]

Mostly the price and the availability for a 17 year old model. And the leather patch looks a bit off

[Maynard Friedman]

2-tone arcs look odd, though I have no idea if they’re correct or not.

[beautiful_FrEaK]

This threw me off as well first but I think it's correct.
@julian-wolf can confirm 

 

This is probably a correct one: 

https://antiquejohn.thebase.in/items/79730442

[chicote]

So strange, repros of repros. I noticed that there's a brand selling reproductions of Rising Sun Blacksmiths on ebay currently, as well as a couple other models.. red tornado i think was the brand? Anyway, seems like a similar approach. I was tempted for a moment, but something about it felt strange, not to mention workers must not be getting compensated well at $90 a pair.

It did make me wonder, though, about some of the larger and more popular repro brands here, eg. freewheelers, toyo, warehouse. I've been curious to know what their production processes are like, how many employees they have, and so on, seeing as they turn out a relatively large number of new pieces every season, completely dwarfing smaller brands like TCB and the like. Even brands like At Last seem to have huge catalogs, and someone has to be producing all of it--anyway, just a side curiosity that spun out of this discussion of these new repro-repro brands.

[willi]

That would be interesting to see. Manufacturing transparency is one of the biggest draws to TCB for me. It's cool to see so much of the process, and who is involved.

[Hopethisoneisnttaken]

Tcb are relatively small I think because they make denim products for other brands as well. House brands are usually smaller. 

Edited November 29, 2023 by Hopethisoneisnttaken

[Duke Mantee]

On 11/22/2023 at 10:05 PM, willi said:

Well, it's an excuse to post a photo of my melton vest from Workers, reproduced from the style of Willis and Geiger. I have a lot of fondness for this garment. The store that I bought it from is going out of business, and from what I can understand reading Japanese blogs, it's become very difficult to produce these kinds of items with the current economic situation. Melton, corduroy, and many other fabrics seem to be in real danger of falling out of an already niche market entirely. Hopefully I am wrong. I think there is something unique and especially beautiful about reproduction compared to vintage: sewing the accumulated cultural meaning back into the garment and putting it onto a new generation to write the next chapter.

I also get great reactions wearing this. "... Are you wearing a wool vest?". Why yes I am.

I’ve seen quite a few Filson vests that are similar - but simpler. I like the pocket variety on yours better.

Also here’s the Baker vest by Freewheelers from winter 2011

The FW Sasquatch takes things quite a big step forward

 

… but the variety of vests, complex or otherwise, they produce from all the materials you’ve noted (without forgetting beachcloth and others) is quite impressive 

Edited November 30, 2023 by Duke Mantee

[Cold Summer]

Here's something that's maybe been discussed before, but a topic of interest to me: how has your style changed since you discovered denim nerdery?

I got into all this back in late 2009 when I found out about Nudie. At the time I was clearly in the hipster aesthetic, wearing the skinniest possible jeans and buying most of my clothes from places like Urban Outfitters or American Apparel. For the first few years I just sort of integrated raw denim into this preexisting style. Maybe around 2012 or so, when I'd been in Japan about a year, I started to warm up to how Japanese fans wore this kind of stuff, in a more relaxed style than mine, but I was still a devotee of the very slim fits until the mid 2010s. Around then I started to experiment with slightly more heritage elements, getting engineer boots and sometimes shopping at places like RRL. I had a weird phase in 2016-17 where I got really into the Hedi Slimane look and went back to really skinny jeans, I was still wearing some denim nerd brands like 3Sixteen but had a lot of stuff with that fake rockstar aesthetic... I really cringe looking back on that now, especially considering that I was in my late 20s when that went down.

I shook that off in 2018 as I started drawing more inspiration from things like LVC lookbooks, wanting a return to a more "heritage" aesthetic and vintage clothing. When I got my Flat Head 3005s and started tucking in my tees in fall 2018, that was when I pretty much reached my present style, trying to combine amekaji the way that Japanese fans wear it, with a more general pre-1990s American alternative dork aesthetic/"extra from an arcade scene in a movie set in the 80s" style in the summer, and "failed mid-century ranch hand and/or villainous extra from Justified" in the cooler months; and my style really hasn't changed at all since then.

[Double 0 Soul]

Total opposite for me.. starting wearing vintage Levi’s in the early 90s.. who knows what cut they were?.. I wouldn’t have known the difference back then.. moved onto LVC-47s in the mid to late 90s.. onto SC-47s in the early 2000s and I’ve worn a 46 or 47 cut pretty much exclusively ever since... I briefly flirted with different Sugarcane fabrics around 2008 but the cut pretty much stayed the same.

Style-wise has always been a mix of denim and the influence of the scene I was into at the time.. sneaker collecting in the early 90s (before it started to repulse me) the night life/clubs, music, collecting records, BMX’ing, skateboarding, MTB’ing.. VWs.. the folks who I was hanging around with, the city I lived in, all had some influence.. and later when my social life stated to wane.. the interwebz, this place and Japanese websites/blogs all had some influence.. albeit  more subconsciously.

Edited December 1, 2023 by Double 0 Soul

[Double 0 Soul]

Anyone remember when the MA1 has a resurgence around the early to mid 90s first time since the skins.. I bought one for £34 from a massive outdoor army surplus in Norfolk.. reason it’s come to mind is the mention of Schott in another thread..

The first time I was aware of Schott as a brand, was their MA1 repro’s in the 90s you could buy a standard Schott bomber for around £90 or a flame retardant one for around £110.. I think it had pocket flaps rather than being an exact repro.. I remember being sat in the boozer with my mates.. one of them was wearing a fire retardant Schott.. while another had his lighter under the table trying to burn his sleeve just to check

[Double 0 Soul]

When you look back at some of the wilder styles through history.. the styles of the 1980s for instance would never have happened if we had the internet..

..conversely styles you see around here.. techwear and such wouldn’t have happened without the interwebz..

[Maynard Friedman]

I bought my first MA-1 in early 1986. A black, Alpha industries model, made in USA, from Silverman’s army surplus in Mile End for about £50. This was post-skinhead when they’d become ‘trendy’ in black and navy, although I think green still had too many yobbish connotations for a general fashion item. At the time, this model was seen as the real deal and there were plenty of shiny imitations/fakes around. My friend had the jacket with the split hood - can’t remember what that model was called.

A few years later, in the early 90s, I bought a green MA-1 from Interstate (again, Alpha, made in USA) and subsequently, a blue CWU model from Schott (again, made in USA I think). This had pocket flaps, a small collar and felt more substantial than the MA-1s. I don’t have any of them now, all thrown away or given to charity, although I did take the plastic tops from the sleeve pen-pocket of the green MA-1 and put them in the sleeve pen-pocket of my Spiewak N3-B!

[Duke Mantee]

2 hours ago, Double 0 Soul said:

Anyone remember when the MA1 has a resurgence around the early to mid 90s first time since the skins.. I bought one for £34 from a massive outdoor army surplus in Norfolk.. reason it’s come to mind is the mention of Schott in another thread..

The first time I was aware of Schott as a brand, was their MA1 repro’s in the 90s you could buy a standard Schott bomber for around £90 or a flame retardant one for around £110.. I think it had pocket flaps rather than being an exact repro.. I remember being sat in the boozer with my mates.. one of them was wearing a fire retardant Schott.. while another had his lighter under the table trying to burn his sleeve just to check

 

2 hours ago, Double 0 Soul said:

When you look back at some of the wilder styles through history.. the styles of the 1980s for instance would never have happened if we had the internet..

..conversely styles you see around here.. techwear and such wouldn’t have happened without the interwebz..

I remember the MA-1 as the weapon of choice for skinheads … that was well before the 90s though. I still associate the jacket with that period and I’ve disliked it intensely since then. 

However, come the 80s / early 90s I was hanging out ‘The Warehouse’ shop quite a bit. They were selling (IMO) the most amazing clothes and (JPG, Vivienne Westwood, ‘Antwerp 6’, etc) and Gaultier introduced his ‘Junior’ range - it was his take on streetwear … jeans, denim jacket variants and I bought a few pieces.

I don’t have pics and can’t find much online but my favourite outfit was a pair of shoes that engineer boots with the shaft removed, black Junior Gaultier jeans and a hybrid MA1 (sleeves - black) / Type 3 (body - burgundy) jacket.

This was the one of the other variants which was short body MA1

[Maynard Friedman]

Duke - don’t you mean you were buying a lot of clothes from Jeff Banks Warehouse catalogue back then? 🤣

[Double 0 Soul]

I used to quite like The Clothes Show.. I think it was on, on’a Sunday tea-time before Last of the Summer Wine.. and the hopeless depressing That’s Life with its dogs that couldn’t really say ‘sausages’

[Maynard Friedman]

I remember fashionistas wearing black DMs (shoes I think rather than boots) with the toecap leather removed to reveal the exposed steel underneath in the late 80s. I think these were JPG.

Ironically, if you’d have gone to West Ham or Millwall about a decade before that, you may well have seen homemade versions of these in a 10 hole boot version on the terraces! 

[Duke Mantee]

18 minutes ago, Maynard Friedman said:

Duke - don’t you mean you were buying a lot of clothes from Jeff Banks Warehouse catalogue back then? 🤣

Fuck no … I was much too trendy to be doing that

[Double 0 Soul]

1 hour ago, Duke Mantee said:

 

This was the one of the other variants which was short body MA1

Looks like the mustard version  Neneh Cherry wears in the Buffalo Stance video 1988

Edited December 1, 2023 by Double 0 Soul