Tender Co. Denim

[rodeo bill]

Love the pics - and the people that work their look really friendly ..any chance of a pic of the tee being worn ?

thanks! and ^^ they are! It's been such a pleasure getting ti know, and spending time with, all the people making things for my project.

Well I was going to wait until Friday... but I've just realized I don't actually have a plain white Tender T at the moment. So here you go:

woad dyed Type 350 T worn at least once a week since Christmas, and washed correspondingly (this was the first woad T we did, and the colour is deeper in production, although this one has also faded a bit). Type 132 indigo-dyed jeans (again the first go, we got a deeper colour later on) not worn, but tried on quite a bit, so they've softened up...

[Ponga]

Just purchased a belt from superdenim. Can't wait to see them! ^^

for me, jeans with 13" thigh are too big for my style. Guess I'll have to wait until next season.

[LC_Miey]

thanks! and ^^ they are! It's been such a pleasure getting ti know, and spending time with, all the people making things for my project.

.

Im very interested on the fit, woould be cool if you can post back fit pics.. i just want to see how the yoke/pockets sits..

[beatle]

Thanks++++looking good+++

[Snake]

Thanks for the sizing info, Bill.

The chest measurements for the jacket seems huge compare to the shoulder measurements, is it to accommodate the wool lining? Is it really thick?

It seems the black dye on the belt is only on the surface and not all the way through. I was wondering given some extended wear, will some black dye will flak off and have this vintage black and brown look?

[aso2004]

I just got my jeans in and they look unlike any other I got.

It will be Fun wearing these in , Indigo everywhere...:D:D

[Snake]

Aso2004 - can you post some fit pics when you get the chance? thanks!

[rodeo bill]

The chest measurements for the jacket seems huge compare to the shoulder measurements, is it to accommodate the wool lining? Is it really thick?

some jacket photos. This is the first sample, the shoulders are actually a bit narrower. I think maybe why the chest measurements seem really huge is there's a 2" back pleat, and side straps, which take a lot of shape out of the back. The idea with these is to give you room to move across the shoulders and back. The wool lining doesn't really add that much bulk, just keeps you nice and toasty:)

the jeans in the top picture are TYPE132 worn about a year

[rodeo bill]

I thought I'd put up a few pictures of Dorrit Dekk, who did the drawings for my Tshirts in the first season. Dorrit was best friends with my grandparents since they all came to London together from Berlin in the 30s. She was a poster designer and did some really lovely stuff. Here are a few of her early bits & pieces:

and some photos of Dorrit doing the Tender drawings. It was really fun, and she says she really enjoyed doing them. I had to keep stopping her from throwing everything away, Dorrit's very self-critical!

[rodeo bill]

oh, and off-topic perhaps, but I went over for tea on Saturday afternoon- I was just about to leave when Dorrit noticed my Puma bag. Now much improved by Dekk:)

[beatle]

Almost missed the last page ! If you ever go back - please give Dorrit a hug from me ! It's so awesome to see that Tender denim is a generation mix - and she seems to have such a good energy ! Man, I really got to get her to paint something on a Tee ....

[Snake]

some jacket photos. This is the first sample, the shoulders are actually a bit narrower. I think maybe why the chest measurements seem really huge is there's a 2" back pleat, and side straps, which take a lot of shape out of the back. The idea with these is to give you room to move across the shoulders and back. The wool lining doesn't really add that much bulk, just keeps you nice and toasty:)

the jeans in the top picture are TYPE132 worn about a year

Thanks for the jacket fit pics, Bill. The jean looks great too. I am just waiting for Hickoree to put them up on its website. I have 39"-40" chest so I am debating between size 1 or 2. Love the sleeve cuffs btw.

[jasonfoote303]

Tender Denim just in at Unionmade in SF.

Jeans, Coats, Belts, and T Shirts

It all looks fantastic!

The quality is as good as anything I've seen.

I can't wait to try it on!!!

[Anders Helseth]

I tried on the jacket in a size 4 (the salesperson at Few and Far said that was the biggest size), and the arms came up a whole inch and a half too short. I'm not very tall (aprox 185 cm), and usually most denim jackets fit in the arm length.

Otherwise, a very nice jacket, and all the details were great. Extremely dark shade of indigo, which I enjoyed.

[mtchfrnk]

I'm looking forward to these

http://twitpic.com/20cvui

[amin]

bought a woad dyed t-shirt from few and far yesterday. very impressed with it. great fit and very well made.

[hurhur]

which online store to kop belt?

[rodeo bill]

^^pm'd ya hurhur

So I was shooting the second season Tender guide book photos yesterday, and since I had a big bit of white paper taped out on the roof... thought I'd take some photos of my type 132 jeans, now worn about a year:

[mtchfrnk]

So I was shooting the second season Tender guide book photos yesterday

pics or it didn't happen

[rodeo bill]

If you ever go back - please give Dorrit a hug from me !

I see Dorrit nearly every week! Went over for lunch today- a nice walk across the park in the sun. Dorrit went to the new Picasso exhibition at Gargosian Galleries last week (I haven't seen it, but it comes highly recommended, as does Anthony Gormley at White Cube, but the RA Summer Exhibition, is apparently the worst ever- Dorrit said she thinks each year that it couldn;t possibly get any worse, and yet it always does!), anyway at the Picasso show there were some ceramic masks which she really liked. Here's this morning's work:

wearing my glasses:

and beatle's hug:):

[rodeo bill]

So a lot of people may already have seen/done this themselves, but I thought I'd also put some photos up of how Tender's Tshirts are screen printed.

I've done a bit of screen printing since college, and I've always really enjoyed how relatively low tech it is. Sadly (perhaps) a lot of printing is done digitally these days, and in many ways digital printing is in fact better (quicker, cheaper, more accurate, less labour intensive), but there's something about the inconsistencies of hand screen printing which is really lovely.

First the graphic to be printed is separated into the different colours, and they're printed in black onto tracing paper:

Here's Lal, in Leicester, checking the tracing paper printouts (done on a regular office printer) on the lightbox to make sure there are any dots, which would cause spots on the final print:

(in the above picture you can see the 2 separations, for the black outline of Dorrit's Kafka drawing, and it's pink face)

Lal gets out a screen (very fine fabric stretched tight over a metal frame) coated with UV light sensitive photographic chemicals. Coated screens need to be kept in a dark cupboard so they don;t get accidentally exposed, although they're nowhere near as sensitive as photographic film)

and double-checks that the graphic will fit onto this screen size

then the coated screen with the tracing-paper artwork underneath it goes into the lightbox. The lightbox has a vacuum pump on it, which makes sure everything stays flat.

A very powerful UV light goes on in the box- this exposes the screen coating where the tracing paper is clear, but where the black artwork on the tracing paper covers up the coating on the screen, the coating doesn't get hit with the light, so it isn't exposed (does that make sense?)

[rodeo bill]

so now the screen is exposed it goes into the wet room, and a wetting agent is poured over it. This loosens the unexposed photo-coating which was masked bu the black artwork on the tracing paper:

which starts to become visible (I love this bit!)...

the screen gets jetted with a power hose

to get all the coating out of the clear sections

once the artwork is fully clear

the screen gets a quick dry (with the Leicester & Loughborough edition of Metro)

and we're ready to print!

[rodeo bill]

so we have screens prepared for the 2 colours in the 'bahamut' print. First Lal (another brilliantly friendly guy I've met during all this- drives me back to the station, opens on Saturdays to let me pick stuff up etc etc) checks that they'll line up correctly, and then clamps the screens in position on a big rotating jig. This means they can then be printed without checking the allignment each time.

the inks on for Tender's Tshirts are all water-based. these are more environmentally acceptable than solvent-based inks, plus they fade really nicely over long-term washing. Here are the inks colour-mixed for this series of Tshirts:

The ink goes onto the screen:

and gets pulled across it smoothly with a squeegee:

where the screen coating was masked by the artowork, and then washed off, and because the screen itself is so fine, the ink just goes straight through in the artwork space, leaving the graphic printed on the fabric:

[rodeo bill]

Now Lal swings the next screen into place, and checks that the graphics match up:

and then prints the second colour:

This was just a test on some spare fabric, so it gets a good check to make sure the colour align

and then a real Tshirt goes through in exactly the same way:

and the finished Tshirts go through a dryer on a coneyer belt:

so that's how Tender Tshirts are printed. Sorry if people have seen this before or if it wasn't that interesting, but I really enjoyed seeing it all:)

[epitaph220]

love the photojournalism

i need to wear that t shirt

[beatle]

I feel the same way

Thanks so much for giving Dorrit a hug !

[rodeo bill]

bought a woad dyed t-shirt from few and far yesterday. very impressed with it. great fit and very well made.

good stuff! glad to hear you like it:)

You already know how it was made, seems as good an excuse as any to show you how it was dyed....

here's what the woad field looked like last time I was there a couple of weeks ago;

and here it is again in October, when the flowers have dyed off and the leaves are ready to harvest:

woad is a brassica, related to cabbages and, closely, to rape (don't know if they call it that in other countries... rape seed oil is a cheap vegetable oil, and you see huge parts of the English countryside covered in bright yellow flowers in summer). Here's a woad plant:

[rodeo bill]

the leaves get cut, and they go into big covered plastic containers, where they ferment and form a sort of mulch

once the leaves have moulded down and gone a but sticky, they get formed into balls, which are left out to dry in the air (in Ian's wife Bernadette's garden to be precise)

as they dry and oxidise, the indigotin in the leaves goes blue!

[rodeo bill]

one the woad has fully oxidised, the balls are boiled up, the buts of leaf and stick are removed, and the liquor is reduced over a low heat on an electric hob until it forms a sort of syrup. This goes into baking dishes and into the oven, where it is baked into a hard cake of indigo. (sorry no pics of these stages)

The cake gets broken up.

and a bit of self-indulgent solid indigo porn:

[rodeo bill]

Once the woad indigo has reached this stage it's just a matter of breaking it up a bit smaller:

Woad Tshirt dyeing pictures to follow in a bit