craftsmanship, consumerism, virtue, privilege, and quality

also Texas Tuxedo

Tulsa tuxedo?

The owner of SelfEdge in his denim wedding suit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ayn/1451831750/in/photostream/

I absolutely love the deflated, arms held at side posture that all sufu/styleforum people pose in

He actually wore it for the next 14 months until the right wear patterns set in

ha

too bad it doesn't fit him properly. I hope he soaked that shit in the bathtub before the wedding

lol

btw i have been wondering this for a while but can someone explain what the big deal about selvage denim? doesn't all loomed woven fabric technically have a selvage? i understand that the selvage is generally more durable than a cut edge, it won't unravel, ok sure. i am not trying to be dumb about this, i just have never really seen an explanation that i found reasonable satisfying.

idgi either but as far as I can tell it just signifies authenticity since that's the way it was traditionally done. and you have to roll up your cuffs to show it off.

right! and, well, using the selvage as part of the pattern lines means that you need to use more yardage than you would if you laid the pattern out by area & grain alone, yes? i realize i'm making an assumption here about the weaving & manufacturing processes but it seems like the value of selvage partly has to do with only using the *best* part of the denim -- i don't know if that also implies more waste or what, but definitely lends itself to higher materials cost.

it's kind of like how chinese scholars would grow their fingernails long to show they didn't have to do manual labor

It started out as a heritage thing in Japanese denim, and since that denim was made to a higher standard than industrial denim it became a signifier of quality. Then it blew up and you could get selvage at Old Navy (etc.) which was no better than non-selvage.

oh and i just want to say, too -- that selvage denim suit looks so so awful

heh, his whole outfit is unbelievable

the yo-yo! the wedding yo-yo

It's so embarrassingly bad-looking that I get squeamish just looking at the pic.

Who would marry someone wearing that?? How did his bride/partner-to-be not march him right out the door and to the nearest department store?!

my inner jewish mom is worrying about him staining that wonderful white dress shirt with that denim

…aren't you a chinese dude dayo?

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1411/1450976673_58d729c992_z.jpg

because he is the dude who owns this site, i guess? http://www.selfedge.com

yes silby

Self Edge carries the world's finest denim and leather accessories, all with a distinct aesthetic and details that are second to none. Selvedge lines made of metallic red silk, rivets made from sterling silver, poisonous python skin tags from Okinawa—we've gone to great lengths to find these unique items and make them available to you. We don't see a pair of jeans as just a pair of jeans. We see them as part of your life—something that ages with you and, like you, only becomes better with time.

poisonous python skin tags from Okinawa

*shudders*

all this time I thought dayo was an old jewish woman

pythons are not poisonous

what about their skin tags?

this is how you rock the denim suit...

http://theselvedgeyard.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/bing-crosby-wearing-levis-denim-tuxedo.jpg
http://theselvedgeyard.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/jes038a032p13a.jpg
http://theselvedgeyard.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/levis-tuxedo-denim-bing-crosby.jpg

note: the flower is made of red levis tags!

http://theselvedgeyard.wordpress.com/2009/10/17/history-of-denim-through-the-ages-western-wear-goes-hollywood/

hotel-men!

3:49 am, January 3, 1952: a belligerently drunk Bing Crosby demands a room at a motel in Flagstaff under the authority of his denim tuxedo

the wedding yo-yo is kind of awesome and 10x better than anything I've gotten at a wedding

do you think crosby washed his denim suit? if so, what was his technique?

guys you know who the modern granddaddy of all this stuff is

http://images.wikia.com/seinfeld/images/7/75/J_peterman.jpg

i posted a picture of that dude on this thread on november 6th. get with the times, man.

jesus, i've been on this thread too long...

eh, whatever.

woops sorry scott!

I remember reading those slim little j peterman catalogues out loud to my family as if they were joke books. they were just unreal.

http://www.vintageshoecompany.com/

Are there other companies in existence for years that are jumping on this trend?

oh, and http://www.manufactum.de/home.html (since 1988)

The stuff on that vintageshoeco site is pretty nice actually!

Shoes are one thing where I really do think it makes sense to pay for quality, since they take such a beating on a daily basis, especially if you're in a city and you walk a lot. Particularly if you also have to keep the shoes nice looking for work.

choice quote I cam across on http://threadbared.blogspot.com:

The problem of patina, which McCracken has recently proposed as a general term to deal with that property of goods in which their age becomes a key index of their high status, disguises a deeper dilemma, the dilemma of distinguishing wear from tear. That is, while is many cases, wear is a sign of the right sort of duration in the social life of things, sheer disrepair or decrepitude is not....

Objects with patina are perpetual reminders of the passage of time as a double-edged sword, which credentials the "right" people, just as it threatens the way they lived. Whenever aristocratic lifestyles are threatened, patina acquires a double meaning, indexing both the special status of its owner and the owner's special relationship to a way of life that is no longer available. The latter is what makes patina a truly scarce resource, for it always indicates the fact that a way of living is now gone forever. Yet, this very fact is a guarantee against the newly arrived, for they can acquire objects with patina, but never the subtly embodied anguish of those who can legitimately bemoan the loss of a way of life. Naturally, good imposters may seek to mimic this nostalgic posture as well. but here both performances and reviews are a more tightly regulated affair. It is harder to pretend to have lost something than it is to actually do so, or to claim to have found it. Here material wear cannot disguise social rupture.

-- Arjun Appadurai, 1993, "Consumption, Duration, and History," in Streams of Cultural Capital, D. Palumbo-Liu and H. U. Gumbrecht (eds.), Stanford: Stanford University Press.

compare street etiquette dudes selling vintage pieces on parkandbond.com, where we find the following caveat in every product description:

Please note that any distressing is a desirable aspect of this one-of-a-kind vintage piece

well, if i ever need to date again i've got my angle sorted.

you guys... this... i don't even know how to address this. wtf, horsehair toothbrush:

http://image.365things.jp/img/590/96.jpg

we all switched to those last year, elmo

http://i.imgur.com/E6WIf.jpg

"timeless design"