craftsmanship, consumerism, virtue, privilege, and quality

i only buy used clothing. and that's rarely. i keep wearing something until its falling off of me. i had to buy shoes recently and it bummed me out. my last pair lasted only 4 years. i went to a flood sale in brattleboro and bought three pairs of shoes and hopefully they will last me at least 12 years. but the winters and rains have been rough, so, we'll see.

there are entire threads on superfuture and styleforum devoted to documenting the aging process of denim & leather goods which are pretty interesting to read -- not just to see how the objects change over time but also because it's almost competitive, you see these dudes expressing admiration & jealousy at how awesome that pair of beat up red-wings are, there's totally a fetish for authenticity going on

carhartt is the way to go. good brand. i only own one pair of shorts and they are carhartts and i've had them for ten years.

my carhartt coat is older than that. i went and bought books from someone last year whose uncle and aunt had gone into a nursing home and they GAVE us the most amazing collection of winter hunting gear. coats, pants, gloves, sweaters. i'll never have to buy another winter coat as long as i live. and this stuff was old too. but in amazing condition.

http://www.itsworn.com

elmo otm - those threads are so weird

there's this image burned into my brayne of a guy who bought mannequin legs to put his jeans on when he wasn't wearing them, to preserve the 'form' of the jean that might get destroyed by folding them flat

real carhartt shit is amazing. I had two jackets in high school, and I think I either outgrew them or my dad still has them somewhere. the insulated coveralls are awesome if you're somewhere rural and are out plowing snow or even walking the dog in a couple feet of snow

On the flip side, there's the superfuture dudes as you said. I have a friend who is on the "not washing raw denim for seven months, constant wear" thing and his girlfriend is just going nuts because he's wearing his never-washed pants everywhere and sitting on the bed and such. I understand the commitment, but it seems so artificial

a number of the pictures of boots on that site elmo just linked look like they walked around the block a few times and still have the original polish!

I haven't washed my jeans in a long time but it's cause they don't really smell (yet)

the real test is to ask your girlfriend or mother what they think

Carhartt shirts are cut weird, even for 'American-sized' work clothes. Giant balloony sleeves and super-long bodies.

I wear raw denim for the most part, but that's largely because I like the materials and cuts better than what I can find at the Gap or Levi's, and the specific pair I'm wearing (as mentioned earlier) are made by one guy in the East Bay. I wash them monthly.

I don't like to wash my jeans because they feel so stiff afterwards and they shrink and it takes time to break 'em in again

on the flip side, you could buy slightly larger jeans and then complain about how by the end of the second day without washing they're starting to get a little too loose and you need a belt?

oh man, right behind the house i live in, there is a dilapidated garage full of garbage -- the neighbors who own the property have been using it to store all sorts of trash, and also to deal drugs out of, and also to raise fighting roosters in. it's kind of a long story.

so recently the owner of the garage hired this random guy we'd never seen before, pretty sure he was being paid in hard drugs, and among other jobs he was supposed to paper & tar the roof of the garage all by himself. the cops forced him to stop because the neighbors didn't have a construction permit.

anyway, my point is, right now there is an abandoned carhartt work jacket drenched in roofing tar that is hanging off a ladder the tweaker dude made out of scrap wood, just there for the taking. i should totally grab it for myself because SUPER AUTHENTIC CRACKHEAD REALNESS, right?

yeah but washing jeans every two-three days is a waste! xp

there are entire threads on superfuture and styleforum devoted to documenting the aging process of denim & leather goods which are pretty interesting to read -- not just to see how the objects change over time but also because it's almost competitive, you see these dudes expressing admiration & jealousy at how awesome that pair of beat up red-wings are, there's totally a fetish for authenticity going on

― i think this is serious (elmo argonaut), Wednesday, November 16, 2011 5:02 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

haha these threads are great cause its like 60% marketing execs and lawyers and other office workers trying to figure out how to best "age" their workwear, while not actually doing anything that could, like, age it

I think you'd need to somehow dress up the description and sell it in a vintage store or auction? I think there has to be a middleman between our authentic workwear-loving strawman and actual crackheads

on the flip-flipside of this, there's the "aged" aesthetic that brands like american eagle or the abercrombies of the world have been perpetuating that just means "shitty clothing sanded to look faux-worn that later falls apart"

lol pre-worn jeans look so awful

on the flip-flipside of this, there's the "aged" aesthetic that brands like american eagle or the abercrombies of the world have been perpetuating that just means "shitty clothing sanded to look faux-worn that later falls apart"

― mh, Wednesday, November 16, 2011 10:20 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

when i was 12 i wrote a v angry poem about this

my favorite is when the crease on the back of the leg where the knee that's supposed to be the original color of the jeans actually falls on the wearer's calf or ankle because the wearer is significantly shorter than the model they based the wear pattern off of

i still have my 80's-vintage denim jackets from high school. like, 4 or 5 of them. gonna pass them down to my grandchildren's grandchildren.

there was this video tutorial i saw a while back that was about "how to age your new raw denim!" and demonstrated using sandpaper and bleach and wax and shit. kinda lol, especially the wax part. i made candles for a year when i first graduated college (lol artisan) and i can tell you, having your jeans saturated with wax is totally nagl and directly leads to horrible swampiness

maria makes fun of me for keeping them all. they're in good shape. all levis.

uh... by "sandpaper and bleach and wax and shit" i do not mean they advocated using actual shit, tho.

I'm sure somebody on sufu has tried that

also waxed denim is a thing. you can buy jeans with a wax coating. they kind of look like leather then

my favorite is when the crease on the back of the leg where the knee that's supposed to be the original color of the jeans actually falls on the wearer's calf or ankle because the wearer is significantly shorter than the model they based the wear pattern off of

:(

probably not the thread, but what do you think of waxed denim, elmo?

shit, wk beat me to it

I keep remembering how when I was younger I had a (black!) denim jacket to which my mom had sewn all the patches I had acquired at America's National Parks on our Big Trip Out West, and I keep wanting to find the jacket and buy a new denim jacket to reattach those patches to.

oh man, my whole family had denim jackets when I was a kid. I think they were pretty light in color, hopefully not acid washy

I kind of want one now, but... a cool one. Which will probably look about as awesome in years

i did not even know waxed denim was a thing!

I think it's been kind of a side thing on designer labels, but the fringe is starting to maybe pick up self-waxing? idk

I bought some brown jeans that were whatever that downmarket varvatos label is on huge discount and they were 'waxed denim'

requisite superfuture link: http://supertalk.superfuture.com/index.php?showtopic=14662

noooo they're gonna invade us now

i did not even know waxed denim was a thing!

http://www.orvis.com/orvis_assets/prodimg/8978NWolive_lg.jpg

tbh waxed denim makes sense to me for coats & other outerwear, not sure about how i feel about it being right next to the skin -- also there's probably a difference between commercially treated fabric used to make stuff vs applying beeswax to yr own jeans

xp haha yeah i knew barbour was gonna come up, like i said -- makes sense for outerwear!

Waxed outerwear is still not as good as goretex and whatnot - it gets awfully steamy on the inside of that stuff.

i got a barbour coat from those people i was talking about. i dig it. smelly though. maria and i have matching smelly oily coats.

I guess what interests me on the commercial side of this is how these denim & leather goods are designed and marketed with special attention to how they age and how that relates to perceived quality / craftsmanship / authenticity

like how, for example, you could see how well a garment retains its color could arguably be an indicator of quality -- it stays "like new" longer -- but in some cases how color fading is preferred because, idk -- because it recalls less industrialized modes of production?

would steal:

http://www.orvis.com/orvis_assets/prodimg/4X18F1FH_lg.jpg

always been a sucker for old-tyme rich people clothes. i can't deny it. that i buy cheap in thrift stores. man, marthas vineyard was a goldmine. got my nantucket reds, yellows, and greens there. 3 bucks apiece.

I had to google that but I'm still going to pretend that you were talking about pills

nantucket reds are another good example on the other end of the class spectrum, because they are supposed to fade too -- also "bleeding madras".

nostalgia for "how things used to be made" etc

max is onto something when he mentions that it's also nostalgia for a time when people did manual labor

i guess it's unfortunate that my first exposures to Carhartt as a brand was when all the dipshit neighborhood teenagers would show up for summer/temp jobs with our construction company in head-to-toe brand new Carhartt and then squeal like babies and shy away the moment real, actual work was expected of them.. meanwhile me and the hispanics are wearing the shit out of cheap pre-distressed Arizona crap. Then i bought a pair of Carhartt boots and the soles split after a year.

But then again all my bros in Oregon wear that shit religiously.. like this pic i took last Feb in the mojave with them:
http://i44.tinypic.com/15oh2bt.jpg

pretty sure every stitch of clothing in that photo is carhartt.. well patinaed.

Of course, there's a huge, huge difference in wearing the hell out of work clothes/boots out west where it's dry as hell and here in the sweaty, sweaty south.

Carhartt shirts are cut weird, even for 'American-sized' work clothes. Giant balloony sleeves and super-long bodies.

Hmm, I should check those out. I'm proportioned like a 5'10" dwarf, I guess -- long torso and short legs.

maria is 5' 3" and i'm 6' and we wear the same size pants. which is weird.