Tender Co. Denim

[rodeo bill]

^thank you! this is an extremely small corner of what's up this year. Spring/Summer 2013 will start arriving in shops in the next few weeks, and I'll be sure to post some bits up here. Prototypes for Autumn/Winter 2013 are looking promising too, and have had a very nice reaction from shops so far. Also there are some other exciting projects starting to loom on the horizon. There's a lot going on

[rodeo bill]

but in the meantime.... real life goes on. Last week I was buttoning, labelling, and packing jeans.

I made up a new stamp while I was on the train to the factory:

and stamped a stack of envelopes (I got some weird looks from the lady sitting opposite me...)

waiting at the factory was a box of 129 jeans which I'd brought back from soaking the last time:

first job is putting on the cast brass buttons:

I couldn't take any action shots as I was there on my own, and it takes 2 hands. After a few my fingers really start to hurt, as I have to bend the steel pins by hand. It's fine for one or two, but hurts like hell after a day....

here's the finished job:

[rodeo bill]

next I have to stamp the back of the swingtags. the main plautus stamp on the front is done by the printers who make the tags, but I do the type/size/price one myself, then fill it in by hand:

(the J stands for Japan, and just means these have a Japanese washing label)

each pair of jeans gets a little note signed by me to say thank you and pass them of to the new owner:

jeans get packed up and they're ready to go!

it's not the most romantic part of making a pair of jeans, but it takes time, and this kind of thing doesn't usually get a mention...

[redragon]

^

the jeans is specially made for the Japanese market?

[rodeo bill]

they're exactly the same as the rest of the production, just Japanese customs requires a Japanese language washing label. No other difference

[Aries]

Amazing as always Bill, the time and effort you put into your production really shines through in the finished product.

Speaking of which, with the mutton tallow - I've been applying it to my boots, but I'm wondering if there are any other steps I should be taking?

I clean the boot, apply the mutton, leave it for a few hours, give it a brush down and then a soft cotton cloth rub. Does anyone take any other steps? Use polish or beeswax etc.?

[bbcapone]

Amazing as always Bill, the time and effort you put into your production really shines through in the finished product.

Speaking of which, with the mutton tallow - I've been applying it to my boots, but I'm wondering if there are any other steps I should be taking?

I clean the boot, apply the mutton, leave it for a few hours, give it a brush down and then a soft cotton cloth rub. Does anyone take any other steps? Use polish or beeswax etc.?

Be sure to use a horsehair brush. You don't need to rub it down with a cloth, just wipe off the excess after all thats goiing to be soaked up is absorbed.

Same exact process as you above, though I make a blend of mutton tallow, shea butter and beeswax(not too much beeswax). It is a miricle creame and it makes the leather soft, supple, gives it a great pull up after a while, waterproofs and it is amazing for your skin (like girlfriend steals it even though she has SHELVES of skin care shit)

Plus its 100% non-toxic and natural.

No comment on polish, it is a preference and guys way into dress shoes tend to use it from my experience. Not me, because I've heard when it dries it makes a barrier between your leather conditoner or oils or creams and the leather itself, thus the need to "strip" the polish when you are doing a deep treatment or dyeing the leather. Shouldnt be a problem though unless you are rescuing a pair in horrible condition or painting/dyeing them. On top of that I like to see the natural wear on my boots and polish can cover that up.

Not a shoe expert, just my 2cents

[Aries]

Thanks for the tips mate. I've never considered making my own blend, not comfortable enough with my aptitude for alchemy, I'd probably just create a mess!

[Youthxattak]

Might we ever see Tender doing a lighter weight sweater. Whether graphic, natural dyed, or natural?

Where i live in Florida.. Even during the coldest of days.. You really only need a cotton sweater and a button up. I'm drooling over all the great winter wear sales right now for Tender but I know I would really need a jacket or a heavy wool sweater maybe about once a year.

Not to say I don't look at this at least once a day.. Someone please buy it so I don't have to.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/140910377009?_trksid=p5197.c0.m619

Edited January 27, 2013 by Youthxattak

[rodeo bill]

thanks for the leather essay bbc really nice. aries, I just use the grease directly with my fingers and rub it in thoroughly- it does the trick for me, but I'm sure your method gives a more even result. Bbcapone, I'd love to see pics of how your blend works.

yXa thank you again. There are lighter weight lambswool pullovers to be had in the coming production, although maybe still not florida-lightweight. pics soon!

[bbcapone]

Just recieved my wattle 133(132?) trews from Goodhood.

I have to say, not what I was expecting at all (in a good way)! I had no Idea that the material would be so heavy. I feel like I could walk through lava in these things and I intend to beat the hell out of them, with respect. If that makes any sense. I always carry a knife with me and the slanted pocket of the trews make it very obvious. I'm afraid I'll freak people out, not everyone realizes a knife is a tool and not a weapon.

If anyone has a chance, pick a pair up. You will be blown away. I just realized that everything on my lower body is English including my wallet hahaha.

Bill- I don't have alot of natural leather that would show the effect of my blend. It's kinda a "have to see it in person" thing. I would post my equss belt or redmoon wallet to illustrate, but would that be in bad taste? I'm gonna get a tender belt down the line and I'll post pics.

In other news, my hillside x tender chambray scarf is getting better every single day. I'm going to handwash it but I havent decided when. Suggestions William? I love the color and don't want it to wash out too much but the material is so thin it makes me kinda afraid. Makes me a hypocrite with my "just $*#@ing wash it" policy.

I would add more but I gotta go make Kale soup and nachos for about 19 people, because apparently if your mother and sister are chefs that makes you the designated cook for every party.

[rodeo bill]

^^excellent! thank you very much for this. your pants are indeed the 133 fit, which is bias cut with no side seam (more on that here)

while I certainly wouldn't recommend walking through fire, that is sort of the point of this fabric. i originally came across something similar at the foundry that casts the brass for tender's watch straps:

the fabric above is actually just a brushed twill, whereas the cloth for bbcapone's trews, and indeed youthxattak's special ed Buttery jeans, is full industrial weight beaverteen, which is a heavily brushed satin weave cotton.

the point of piled fabrics is to direct liquid or debris down off the garment. the fibres sticking up out of the cloth are brushed all together in one direction, so that they overlap, like roof tiles. If the tiles (fibres) point downwards, then anything falling onto the cloth will land on their long, smooth sides, and is more likely to run off. If you hold a piled cloth the wrong way up, so that the fibres are pointing upwards (as if roof tiles were laid upside down), from above you see the cut ends of the fibres, and anything that falls on them is more likely to stick.

the most common piled fabrics of this sort are corduroy (intended for farmer's pants, the runnels between the sections of pile theoretically help run water down the leg before it gets a chance to soak in), and velvet, which was used for smoking jackets- cigar ash falls on to brushed velvet pile and drops right off. corduroy and velvet have both become dress cloths, and these days are often cut upside down. Looking down at a pile cut downwards you see the long side of the fibres, which tend to be slightly shiny, and appear a bit silvery. Looking down at a pile cut upwards, you see the cut ends of every fibre, which gives you a much deeper and denser colour. Because you mostly look down at clothes, a lot of cord and velvet these days is cut with the fibres pointing up, which looks better but is the technical equivalent of roofing your house upside down. When I was learning bespoke coatmaking, my boss made a point of always cutting cord and velvet down the piece, the traditional way.

the foundry manager explained to me that beaverteen causes drips of molten metal to run off the surface of the pants before it gets time to sink into the fabric and do serious damage to the person inside them. The holes in the garments above would presumably be a lot worse if there was no pile on the twill.

I should mention that the cloth for the tender trews, jeans, and jackets, is actually of a higher, heavier, spec than this, and is a satin, rather than a twill. Satin weave is a lot denser than twill, and when woven thick has a lovely sponginess to it. The trews have also been dyed with wattle, which involves raising the pile in any case, to take the dye, so by now they're certainly not an industrial garment, but they have some nice back stories in them

[rodeo bill]

Bill- I don't have alot of natural leather that would show the effect of my blend. It's kinda a "have to see it in person" thing. I would post my equss belt or redmoon wallet to illustrate, but would that be in bad taste? I'm gonna get a tender belt down the line and I'll post pics.

In other news, my hillside x tender chambray scarf is getting better every single day. I'm going to handwash it but I havent decided when. Suggestions William? I love the color and don't want it to wash out too much but the material is so thin it makes me kinda afraid. Makes me a hypocrite with my "just $*#@ing wash it" policy.

I would add more but I gotta go make Kale soup and nachos for about 19 people, because apparently if your mother and sister are chefs that makes you the designated cook for every party.

it'd be great to see what you do with your leather- certainly not in bad taste, but totally up to you if you put something up here or in one of the leather threads, of course. Great that your scarf's coming along nicely. pics please! a hand wash might lose you a little bit of the dye, but it certainly shouldn't do the fabric any harm- personally I'd go with your general policy. hope the kale was good !

[nachtelijk]

^thank you! this is an extremely small corner of what's up this year. Spring/Summer 2013 will start arriving in shops in the next few weeks, and I'll be sure to post some bits up here.

looking forward to it, wasn't keen on the A/W stuff due to the eternal summer here.

will be nice if you could update me on where the smallest sizes will be going to

[bbcapone]

whoops neg rep will sorry. curse my fat thumbs!

[rodeo bill]

a nice little piece just went up on the holborn mag. Not necessarily anything people here haven't seen before, but it's a good site, worth a look around

[Youthxattak]

I've been interested to read more on this sleeper project after I saw the link in your email. I love the idea behind Tender and you on your quest to find these local artisans and craftmen. Should be neat what your designs look like with a Japanese touch..

As for bb and your scarf.. If you find the washing fades the color too much for your liking.. I'll give it a good home.. Along with your kale soup an nachos.

[bbcapone]

Sleeper huh? Must have...ugh..slept on that that. I always thought that homestead was a store only. Thought all of tender's collaborations have been great so far. I have a feeling that 2013 will be a year of temptation.

Youth- I intend to wear it until it disintergrates, sorry. Just trying to keep that beautiful hue for as long as possible. I can find you another one new for $117 usd (i believe). As for the soup and nachos, you can cop at the sewage treatment plant for free, used only 1 time, or you can pm me for the recipe.

In other news, my 133s had their first trip to through mud and hopefully their last trip to jail. So gotta wash them 4 days after getting them, sacrilege for most denim-heads. Good thing they aren't denim.

[satchelbmoore]

can we get a fit (mug) shot?

[rodeo bill]

bbc (with some trepidation) tell us about that?!

sleeper's a totally new project- nothing to miss yet. it's not a collaboration exactly, but a whole new line. there's a holding page up at www.builtbysleeper.com and we'll have some content there in the next few weeks. without giving too much away, it's all made in Japan, a little simpler and more workwear-oriented than Tender, and isn't a denim collection. It'll basically be Japan-only, but we're hoping to introduce it internationally at some point. I'll keep you all up to date as things develop!

Edited February 4, 2013 by rodeo bill

[redragon]

^

Sounds intriguing for sure.....

[a125983467]

what kind of letterpress stamp is that? the results are lovely

[rodeo bill]

^thanks! you mean the homestead logo? they're vintage letterpress blocks, nailed onto the wall at the showroom in Tokyo, so individually they're all backwards. The graphic version is a cleaned up illustrator job...

a very nice little piece went up just now on the fader's website. the fader's personally one of my favourite magazines, and they've been really supportive of Tender for a while now- I'm very grateful

Interview: Tender Co. on The Trestle Shop

STORY BY: ALEX FRANK , PHOTOGRAPHY: SAM CLARKE

The softest T-shirt you’ll probably ever own is made by Tender Co., a little British clothing company run by William Kroll that’s dedicated to producing jackets, jeans, sweaters and tees through the finest handmade techniques and with the finest handmade materials. He calls his attention to detail “nurturing,†and that’s the truth—if you take the time caring for cotton, as Kroll fastidiously does, it’ll grow into a gem. Last year, Kroll expanded beyond clothing to open up an online shop called Trestle Shop, dreaming up a variety of curiosities (whistles, teddy bars, mugs, candles, pots for plants) and then roaming England to find out the best way to make them. Here, he explains a few of his processes and why making products locally is so cool.

Tell me about how the shop got started. The shop is run out of a room at home, and I thought it would be nice to have the idea of actually just seeing products as if you were in our house. They’re shot on the table, they’re shot from the angle that you’d be looking at stuff, and I’ll put on a scarf and take a picture of myself. It’s a window into how me and my wife Deborah use the products ourselves. And it’s a way of creating a wider world around the brand, and bringing in new things all the time while the main collection is basically seasonal and drops every few months. With the shop, [even] if we can only make one of [something], or if the cost is too expensive to take it through a wholesale set-up, we can just try out little things and you can sort of get a feeling for how we live.

And you personally commission all the products to be made. In general, I do design everything and it’s all made specifically for the shop. The little notepads, for instance, are made by a factory that has a contract with the London Metropolitan Police, and these are there policeman’s notebooks. But for the police, they make them out of less expensive, split-grain black, sort of plastic-y leather, whereas these are made out of leather that is toned to my specifics. Now I’m getting leather tanned. It’s been growing up and I’ve been getting further and further back down the production line, so it’s more and more special.

How did it become so important for you to pursue all of these really specific ways of making things? I’ve always been like that in a way. Both of my grandfathers were very important to me, so it’s really taken way back. My paternal grandfather was in magazines; he was an editor at Vogue, so he had this creative, good taste side of things. And my other grandfather was a scientist, and after he retired, he made a lot of stuff in his shed. He was very unimpressed when I talked about design, but he was much more interested in it if something worked and was well put-together. He wasn’t interested at all in what color it was or what shape it was. He used to talk about tools being the perfect bits of design. So I guess it’s a combination of the two grandfathers: thinking about how things look and thinking about how things are made.

Tell me how the watches are made. I’m really into watches, and I could talk about them for hours. I don’t have very many watches, but I’ve got a few, and they’re all hand-wound. So as opposed to being mechanical, you actually have to wind them up every day; they can just about go for 2 days. I really like that, and it doesn’t take long, but that little interaction I actually find really nice.

Are they Swiss? They’re unused vintage mechanical movements, which have then been stripped-down, cleaned, and rebuilt in England. So the Swiss movement has been built up in England, cased in England, and then with my dials and oak leather straps and my solid sand-cast, solid brass hardware on them. The fun thing with these is that when people switched from pocket watches to wristwatches, which was around the 1920s, quite a few companies made wristwatches for driving [with the clock faces] at a 45 degree angle, so that you didn’t have to take your hand off the wheel to get the time. So we recreated that.

Did you just sketch the sun glasses, or are they based off an old design you liked? A combination. And there’s this hole in the back, with a string to keep them around your neck. I’m from Oxford, and in Oxford, people go Punting. Punting is going on these really long boats on the river and rowing with the really long poles. I was with some friends and we were punting, and my sunglasses fell of and I obviously never saw them again, so strings were a good idea. And then I thought that, rather than have the strings that stick on, which are kind of horrible, just drill a hole through the end of the temple. And the strings are the leather from the boots that we do, and if you cut them off, it leaves this nice little detail, just this hole at the end, which is unusual and sort of cool.

The stuffed animal might be my favorite piece. I met this guy, he makes stuffed animals and I asked if we could do something. It’s made from natural black sheep skins. I made black sheep skin vests and mittens a couple seasons ago, and I had some skins left over, so these were tanned for me in England so they’re thoroughbred in as local of a region as you’d like. They grew up in the UK, they were tanned in the UK. They’re hand–sewn, sewn with a needle and thread, which was really hard because sheep skin is a lot thicker than the fabrics that he’s used to working with. It’s a real animal shape, rather than being too teddy bear-like, which is nice and I think gives it a different personality, and then it’s stuffed with wood shavings and steel shot in the bottom of the feet, which gives it a real sort of bounce to it. Those are hand-embroidered, nice little glass eyes, and the reverse suede side of the skin used for the paw pads. It’s just nice to be able to do this kind of stuff; it wouldn’t necessarily make sense if you were a fashion brand and doing big, high-level catwalk stuff and wholesale stuff, but by being able to have the shop, we can bring in this level of personal side things.

It’s so crazy to think that a hundred years ago, any shop that you’d go in would be filled with hand-made, local things, just like this. I just read this article in Fortune by this economist on how the next 20 or 30 or 40 years are not going to be so much about globalization as about local economies and local cultures. I mean, I guess I’m not an economist and I don’t know, but it’s interesting to think about once the Internet gives you everything everywhere all the time, then eventually that’s not interesting anymore. I’m not saying that that’s going to go away, but once you have everything anytime, you don’t necessarily want to anymore. Then you start looking around closer to home or you start looking at things stepping outside of that somehow and then doing something more particular. I mean, I hope so anyway.

Read more: http://www.thefader.com/2013/02/04/interview-tender-co-on-the-trestle-shop/#ixzz2JxKC1yfs

[Aries]

Fantastic information and pictures as always Bill.

[satchelbmoore]

sleeper's a totally new project- nothing to miss yet. it's not a collaboration exactly, but a whole new line. there's a holding page up at www.builtbysleeper.com and we'll have some content there in the next few weeks. without giving too much away, it's all made in Japan, a little simpler and more workwear-oriented than Tender, and isn't a denim collection. It'll basically be Japan-only, but we're hoping to introduce it internationally at some point. I'll keep you all up to date as things develop!

sign me up. feel free to slip some #2s into anything coming to BlackBlue.

[rodeo bill]

an awesome photo from my ex-student, good friend, Tender intern, and Sleeper model (of which more soon) Robert Newman. His dad in a pair of unborn 132Ds:

Rob's an excellent guy, and has a lot going on. His tumblr's worth a look- he's doing and making some cool stuff.

Edited February 6, 2013 by rodeo bill

[rodeo bill]

today I was packing up a delivery to Japan, including this jacket as a special order for brown & seedling, in chiba:

this is a wattle dyed version of the type 920 jacket which was in the SS12 production, but which only ever made it to Japan. Although I haven't worn the sample that much myself, I've got a real soft spot for this jacket, so it was good to do a second run. It's based on a 1920s railway worker's blouse, with a false collar, but it's cut with no side seam or shoulder seam. The entire jacket only comes together when the single long back-and-sleeve seam is put together. Including pockets and collar, there are only 9 panels in the whole garment. There's no bottom hem either, just the selvage of the denim, which is an idea that reappeared on the denim guard's jacket.

[Ghost Cat]

Tender type 129 the Hill-Side edition after running around in Nemo. Spreading out my 30 wears before the competition starts is tough. I ended up having them hemmed (sorry, no Tender roll for me), and I think the fit is pretty much perfect. I'm wearing a size 3 although I probably could have safely sized down. The construction is incredible, and there are so many hidden details that you don't even hear about until you examine them up close. There's hidden selvedge reinforcements in the front pockets, a mixture of double-and-triple-stitched seams that suggest serious forethought, and denim-lined front pockets to name just a few. I'm excited to test the limits of Tender's construction over two years in the HWDC and I'll keep you all updated.

[rodeo bill]

^^thank you so much for posting this! I'd say the fit looks pretty much spot on- I'm really excited to see how you get on with them. Perhaps you could cross post some images here?

I've had a couple of requests for pictures of the guard's jackets. I only have the denim one for myself, and it's not had much wear yet, Still though, I'm enjoying it. Here are a couple of photos:

[Youthxattak]

So I'm celebrating my 4 year anniversary out of town this weekend. We were were out visiting some of the local antique shops I found a couple items that seemed right up the Tender Co alley.

First was this really interesting bronze Elephant in full folk styling. (also wearing rollerskates). It sits on a bench in front of this really fun art gallery.

Next was a neat little hand carved railroad conductor lamp.

I know this isnt Tender gear but.. I think it's not too much of a stretch..

Edited February 10, 2013 by Youthxattak