Roy. (expurgated edition)

[volvo240thebest]

they surely do look amazing, packed with quirky, unique details and the cut looks great too. I'm a notorious cheapskate but seen the amount of detailing on these, and the fact they're made by a one man band and sold by a shop price doesn't seem too steep for me.

[JDelage]

9 hours ago, Quoise1203 said:

Yea no one can argue that they are overpriced from an economic perspective.

Anyone versed in economics would tell you that if they sell they are by definition not overpriced.

[Broark]

After seeing Roy's workshop in person I feel like I have a better understanding of the cost.
Everything he puts into his work is time consuming and labor intensive. He's going above and beyond on every little minute detail.
Hell, even the pocket flasher on these took forever to make. He found these interesting naturally dyed papers from a local art supply place and used mismatched flashers from old runs and glued  the paper to the back of the flashers. Then X-acto knifed the papers onto each flasher by hand. This is for a detail that's likely to not even going to noticed by a whole lot of people.
I'll get some pictures, anecdotes, etc. up soon of my visit.

[eeejayaich]

Looking forward to it!

[shredwin_206]

test lot 

[julian-wolf]

On 11/25/2019 at 6:37 AM, Quoise1203 said:

I’ve heard many people comment that ooe stitching is as good or better than Roy. However, although I’ve Never seen a pair in person, ooe look like just a basic pair of very well made jeans, whereas Roy jeans ooze creativity, with all the crazy yet still hidden details.

Have you checked out the Saddle Pants / Hercules Overalls / the collab. jeans they did with Bandana Almanac a bunch of years ago? You're right that their standard jeans are very unassuming—and all the more appealing for it, as far as I'm concerned—but their creativity with detailing is remarkable in its own right. Straying from jeans, their jackets have done an even better job of exemplifying this.

For the record, I absolutely agree that Roy's jeans are reasonably priced. At $1000, they would not be; neither would be Ooe's.

[MJF9]

I had to sit on my hands with those new Roys and when I was thinking of caving they were sold out. Awesome details. Would be good to see those indigo patches on the pockets develop. Anyone grab a pair? 

[Broark]

Thanks for your patience everyone, with the trip and Thanksgiving it's been a very busy week.
My girlfriend and I went out to the Bay Area for the Mega Self Edge party (she was such a trooper for putting up with all my denim stuff all weekend), before we went out there I had sent Roy a note that I was going to be in town if he wanted to meet up and he agreed.
The night of the party we walked down to the new shop I saw Roy was there, went up to him and told him who I was he was like "what happened to you?! I thought we were supposed to hang out!" but we had only gotten in late the night before. So we decided to meet up the next afternoon at this workshop.

We ended up hanging out there for about three hours, talking about: denim and vintage sewing machines, denim experts and historians and all their claims of knowledge as fact, baseball and how much San Francisco Giants fans hate Mark Melancon (as a Braves fan I had no idea what we got ourselves into...), Coach Orgeron and how terrifying he seemingly is, fashion and how it's mostly marketing at the end of the day, living a simple life, learning from trial and error, how Roy didn't used to have a bunch of Roy jeans and now he's made himself a ton out of all these small sample rolls of different fabrics he has laying around, stretching unsanforized fabrics out pre-soak and then grading the denim based on shrinkage and stretch percentage for different parts of the jeans (this was ingenious actually, but very time consuming and wouldn't make sense for a production run of jeans but he did it on a pair of his own and they fit him just the way he likes), how he has stopped so many projects halfway through because he wasn't happy with it for some reason or another, how he feels like he needs to love what he makes because you can't make everyone happy but if he's happy with it then he knows at least one person is happy, how sad he is that Cone has closed and how the bounce of their wooden floors is what really made their denim special, how he made 150 pairs of jeans in a 34 day timespan working 16 hour days, meeting different denim people like Ono-san (rebuilt.jp on Instagram, works for YM Factory) and how when he met Roy and looked at his machines he was amazed at how wrong Roy was using all his different machines.

Sorry for rambling, but our conversations was all over the place and I figured the best way to get it all out is to just put it out there how I remember.
Here's some photos, I could've spent all day just taking photos of all the notes he's made to himself and drawings all over the place. The lighting in his workshop is really amazing.















Roy actually showed us how the free-hand embroidering Singer works and it's pretty incredible.
He pumps the base with his foot and maintains the width of the stitch with a lever controlled by his knee. He said this might be the most time consuming process out of everything else.



This is a small roll of indigo dyed duck canvas from Cone. The interesting thing is that it wasn't dyed by Cone, but another company afterwards that is out of business.
Later Cone tried to develop the same fabric and dye it themselves but it wasn't the same. You'll see it used by Rouge Territory, Tellason, Left Field and other brands, but it just wasn't as good as this stuff. The selvedge ID looks like a wabash stripe.
He was going to make a shirt out of this stuff at one point, but I don't think he had enough fabric and the dying company closed long before Cone shut their doors.

This is a pair of left hand twill jeans Roy made for himself where he experimented with the stretching and shrinking of different panels of fabric to get the shrinkage under control.
He would take the waistband pieces, stretch them over time and measure how much they would stretch before sewing, and then calculate the shrinkage based on a swatch of the fabric.
This in a sense is like sanforizing the fabric almost, but without making it lose all it's depth and interesting features.
I think this fabric was made by Collect, but it looks a lot like Sugar Cane's 50/50 blend fabric.


Thanks for reading, it was pretty amazing to see the place where all these jeans and shirts I've had over all these years are made.
I look forward to the day when I can come back out to Oakland and meet up with Roy and talk for a few hours.

[MJF9]

@Broark spot on mate, great to read - thanks for sharing

[eeejayaich]

Thanks for the write up! 

[JDelage]

Insane!

[shredwin_206]

Glad to see I’m not the only one who wears birks with my ROY haha 

[Maynard Friedman]

That’s a really interesting whistle stop in-site to Roy’s World, thanks Broark.

[beautiful_FrEaK]

Thanks broark! Roy should watch his ceiling

[volvo240thebest]

Thanks for sharing this!

[ShootThePier]

Great write up @Broark!

[UkeNo]

Great job @Broark  

Point to note...Roy's making things from other fabrics/Denim people.

(certain that's not new, but for future projects...??) 

[Broark]

3 minutes ago, UkeNo said:

Great job @Broark  

Point to note...Roy's making things from other fabrics/Denim people.

(certain that's not new, but for future projects...??) 

Just experiments right now, nothing concrete planned yet.

[givemefive]

was roy's post about selling his shop a joke..?

[propellerbeanie]

Can someone convince Roy to make more shirts hehe 

[Broark]

And here are the RS01SAIL jeans, going to give them a machine wash to get all the shrinkage out.

Olive is a fan. 




This patch is a vintage sail cloth made by Cone that has been washed a lot, the selvedge ID is really far offset.
For the production run of the fabric they made the selvedge closer to the edge, the pocket bags are made of the production run of this fabric.

The indigo patches are fabric made by Rowland Ricketts, dyed with the indigo he grew.

[JohnM]

That's a great report Broark -- Roy is taking it to new heights with those details.

Let me know next time you're out in the SF/Oakland Bay Area -- would be great to meet.

[Broark]

@JohnM next time! I did meet up with @julian-wolf while we were out there, grabbed a burger at Sam’s and hit a tiki bar.

[oomslokop]

i think that's the same indigo duck used in the first batch of rising sun's outdoor vest (where the wabash-ish selvedge line is used/shown running down the back), should grab one if one becomes available. thanks for the write-up! nice to get more glimpse of roy's slightly madcap antics. re: the roy vs. ooe debate in the other thread, that would probably be what sets him apart from ryo & hiro. 

Edited December 2, 2019 by oomslokop
tempered self-assurance

[seethruskin]

Here is my bi-monthly looking for any roy shirts in size large/ maybe medium post. 

thanks! 
 

also thanks @Broark for sharing your photos. I’ve always considering hitting roy up when I’m out his way on tour. Maybe I will next time.

[TheEscapist]

Took some quick photos of my Roy stuff this weekend. 

KS1002

RT1002

KS1002 vs RT1002/Cone Project vs Black Seed denim

Cone Project Denim Evolution on KS1002s

Black Seed Denim Evolution on test lot 2, R01, test lot 1, and RT1002

Heavy Denim Shirt

Baja/BBQ Chambrays

All duck

The whole family

 

[MJF9]

@TheEscapist superb work!

[Broark]

Damn. 

[mpukas]

@TheEscapist DAAYUUUUM!

[shredwin_206]

We now need Broark to post his collection. Who has more ROY??