Varsity x Blazer

It's not traditional, but I like the twist.
http://men.style.com/news/blog/2008/11/varsity-blues.html

Raw leather shoes

You should buy these. I think they'll look awesome with your denim.


http://www.blackbirdballard.com/Esquivel_Blackbird_Boot_11035.html
They're beyond me.

Here are some similar options.



http://www.chukai.ne.jp/~motos/leather&silver/index2.html
http://www.e-workers.net/pc/pc_moto/1.htm

LIFE Magazine Photo Archive

Google is hosting the LIFE magazine photo archive.
http://images.google.com/hosted/life

I guess that it is somewhat like the shorpy blog, but this is more commercial and more professional. You also have a search function.

Anyway, I went trawling through the archive to find some photos to show you:

Cowboy Ralph Wellard sporting some decent cuffs. 1943

http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=37f64b8c05e7f9ef

Unnamed cowboy with cloth to stop lip burn. I thought it was to rob a bank. Also note his shirtcuff extension. I need something like that for Japanese sized shirts. 1939
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=5a22844ec3edffbe

Navy Pilots in flight jackets 1952
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/f?imgurl=f6f1eee8260e1345

More Pilots 1952
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=91a7d774dc06cf2c
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=b9a23009786d7d6f
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=f5e8295f096871e4
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=ea8a3e33310e92ba
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=daca14dcb779f873

Ranchers 1952
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=e1de635e53430bef

Col. Henry Russell Spicer. Nice pipe! 1948
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=63fdb4ab81f26f22

Gregory Peck for the movie "Twelve O'Clock High". 1950

http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=d660059041507863

More Pilots 1942 - 1961
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=007345c0fd37383d
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=8f97d4d66adc9ff8
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=2df2d9a22804ee9b
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=e38ad9f2ff38b84d
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=493750aaf35954eb
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=c7a196265900100e

Captain Bus Loane formerly of the Flying Tigers. Nice cardigan, and carrying his A-2. 1948
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=a926a341f4c4968b

Girl Pilot. I love her cap.
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=fd4b9de0d2a6ea82

Excellent texture in this photo of a dude in denim overalls playing the spoons. 1941

http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=27e10ffafe9bedeb

Overalls and a train cap? 1955
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=74e2128455b69006

The Overalls Band. Perhaps it's the same dude playing the spoons. 1941
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=7acbd2bbadd67a66

Earl Nesbitt in cowboy boots.
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=4f85c40239883738

Girls in Denim and Saddle Shoes. Those shoes are spectacular.
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=5299f1f0e75271ee

A Girl combining those saddle shoes with the cap from further above.
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/f?imgurl=1c43d32b09cad14b
She's awesome. Look at the eyelets on those shoes.

500 things you should know: repair ripped jeans

How to repair ripped jeans. From the book "Show Me How - 500 things you should know".

via NotCot (there are some interesting things in this book - like catching fish bare handed!)

Movember

I'm not participating in Movember this year.  I had a lot of support last year, so this year I'm supporting some friends.  It's all for a good cause, so donate or participate if you can.

RHR - OOE Yofukuten & Co. (updated)

OOE Yofukuten is a small Japanese denim brand from Nagoya.
http://ooe-yofukuten.com



Their awesome blog can be found here
http://rhr.blog105.fc2.com/
There are 74 pages of 400 blog posts, starting back in may 2007. I can't read the Japanese, but it's well worth trawling through.

There are lots of interesting pictures. The blog tracks the progress of starting a denim company. You can see the evolution and progress of designs, detailing, branding, and equipment. In earlier posts you can see they are sewing with a Janome in their home (I think) and then progress to a studio with computers, union specials, rivets and leather patches.





In post 154 there is an attempt to translate the first blogpost to English.

I write it in Yahoo translation.
Though the content that I want to convey should be conveyed well; ...

Can the vintage jeans make by ourself?
The making of jeans which began with such a doubt.
This blog is a making process diary of the handmade vintage denim by the amateur self-education.

We make vintage jeans.
"OOE-YOFUKUTEN"is couple unit.
A simple introduction of people making it.

■ Ryo 　
He's person that he is ultimate, everything wants to take that he is interested seriously who insists that there "is not the thing which is not examined by me" calmly. He is good at using exact work and brain. But he does not show interest in being not interested at a point, and it is the difficult person who gets tired suddenly even if interested.
By the jeans making, a paper pattern, selection of denim cloth, the other packaging are in charge.
Untie a thread;, as for the sewing of the unexpectedness, is no touch entirely.

■ hiro
She is person who live only with paste and an atmosphere to insist on ing calmness when she can "do it who can do it." It is easy to be brainwashed and is easy to be influenced. Show interest in the thing which ryo shows interest in; if say; reliance upon others. In fact, she have not worn jeans before coming across ryo jeans beginner. But, it is brainwashed wonderfully by an enthusiastic way of of ryo, and it gets possible to be said with "discoloration" and "a mustache" or "a rivet" as expected as had known now.
By the jeans making, she sew it wholly and am in charge. There is a slightly careless feeling.

It is the process that such two people have begun to settle jeans for.
Please read if good♪

Ryo reads, and hunts for a fashion magazine since the days of a primary schoolchild, and it is taken a heart necessarily by jeans of Levi's. In the days of a junior high student, he obtain vintage jeans 501XX with the New Year's present which I saved steadily for the first time and buy it up how many it is as a start and accomplish growth to excellent jeans otaku while wearing thoroughly investigation advance, various knowledge in character of him.

Such a weekend,we go to visit a secondhand clothes store to look for jeans if there are even time and money with the thing that a way of otaku is still considerable which became an adult. A help, passion to jeans love heat up a way of vintage jeans enthusiasm in Japan of the present age more and more!

One day such ryo thinks incidentally.
When "vintage jeans are extremely too expensive."
Not to mention the thing which a premium seems to stick to, jeans of the vintage jeans brand which thus I stand in a reproduction purpose of Levi's in sequence even if there is not it, and is given are expensive all basically. In the first place what kind of structure do jeans become? I come to have begun to think whether ryo which wanted to take things thoroughly seriously cannot "make jeans" vaguely from that time.

I shared time, and hiro purchased a sewing machine newly again, too and has begun to go through the first step to dressmaking.
A book of the shirt which ryo had in its hand accidentally in a bookstore with an opportunity. Are not you terrible if you can make a so cool shirt? It is paste how.

But the making of jeans was still only telling of a dream of a far-off distance of ryo alone.

One piece of old photograph. This is all openings.

One woman who stands before a signboard written as "OOE-YOFUKUTEN.means tailor Ooe"

Memory of ryo is flashback slowly.
When ryo was a still small child, it is a golden letter ticked away by the body which big black put in Grandfather and a room of a grandmother where I always always went out to to play shines. An old nostalgic standstill-type sewing machine. Always stylish Grandfather whom Grandfather of ryo and thing, Grandfather whom I live by a grandmother, and ran toggery step on a sewing machine, and a grandmother stands to a store, and make having managed a shop, a good suit made with 2. Such a story was told accidentally from an entrance of father of ryo, and pictured ryo which heard it in a head darkly so far; decide that really move that "make jeans" to an action.

The blog title borrowed "OOE-YOFUKUTEN" of such Grandfather with all respect.

All began with a design in the brain of such ryo.

We call the work which ryo and hiro made "RHR" with all love.:)

Update:
I just realised that Spacelounge has a big write-up on ooe-yofukuten. Please check it out at the repeat to fade blog.
http://repeattofade.blogspot.com/

Renovations

I'm going to be changing the template around during the next week. Things will be a bit broken. Sorry.

Pace Jeans (updated)

http://pacejeans.com

Pace seem to be making some nice items.

Our typical PACE denim is made in traditional vintage way on original shuttle looms and comes from small mills around Osaka, Japan. The denim is a right hand twill, ring spun in warp and weft. It’s unique in look and feeling. Using significant details such as split side seams, chainstiching on hem, tab and patch in real leather, buttons have our gearwheel logo in steel finish, zippers in antique copper from the classic brand YKK, strengthened pocket openings on all models, rivets in real genuine copper. All denims are pre-shrunk.

I haven't seen them in person, and I don't think they sell online yet.

Update via lilldavid----------------------

they do sell Pace online
Here: http://www.hepcat.se/index.php?manufacturers_id=47
here: http://shop.sivletto.com/system/search/search.asp?brandid=0&branchid=1&catid=5&container=8
and here: http://www.drytillyoudie.nl/index.php

Ralph Lauren Interview 1993

I saw this a while ago, and lost track of which blog I found it on. Sorry.

It's an hour long interview with Ralph. He talks about a lot of things which are quite interesting. It was nice to hear the discussion around whether Ralph is a designer because it is reasonably valid that he isn't creative at developing new garment structures or construction. He borrows ideas, and isn't doing something original. Ralph takes these comments in his stride. His approach of making clothing is that he is inspired by styles and moods. And that he wanted to make clothes that he wanted to wear (or that he would like his girlfriend to wear) ...but you couldn't find these clothes in stores.

He doesn't like fashion, but believes in timeless-ness.



http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=HO5Uk-TejS8

Style.com denim "hotlist"

Style.com has a denim hotlist.
http://men.style.com/theupgrader/style/hotlist/denim/


I don't understand the ranking system. Jean Shop Rocker is Rank 1 with 276 votes, whereas APC New Standard is Rank 2 with 1108 votes...

Ah, the editors' picks are here:
http://men.style.com/theupgrader/style/hotlist/denim?orderBy=EDITOR&page=1