I have a friend to thank for reminding me of the brand Kicking Mule Workshop. Traditional loose fitting jeans, that's very hard-wearing. Not very Swedish in styling, which always seems a bit more taylored, but real nice in its own special way.
I'm a keen reader of a magazine called Monocle. In a nutshell, it's a briefing on global affairs, business, culture and design. In the previous issue, they interviewed Tadashi Yanai. He's not only the president of the Japanese company Fast Retailing, who is the parent company of Uniqlo, but he's also the richest man in Japan.
whether or not Japan is still the heart and soul of the company, he responds, "Yes, without a heart and soul, a brand cannot be understood". That's why I like Dr.Denim. The wording on the buttons of my jeans say, "A good pair of jeans is like a member of the family". A real love for the product.
Tadashi Yanai: We do both. Our denim fabrics are made in Japan by Kaihara, probably the best mill in the world, and some sewing is done in China. These new products that we are selling in the UK and Japan are made entirely in Japan. We did it because the jeans processing technique in Japan is still the best in the world.
Today I managed to post the two hundreth post on this blog. Never thought I'd get this far. I've been wearing the jeans quite a bit again lately, and every now and again when I have them on, I look at the marks I've made on them over the past 223 odd days. It's such a pleasure to realise that every one of the marks is of my own doing, and not done by some machine in some sort of denim process. Mine look like only mine can and that's what I love about raw denim.
There's such nice lines on the knees, both on the front and the back. Then there's the moustache lines on the front below the pockets. The back pockets also shpw some nice marks. The best thing of all for me is the colour. In the beginning they were black/blue, and now they're much lighter, and a lot softer.
You can check it out online at monocle.com. They cover a lot of current fashion and mix that up with future trends. It's with this that I stumbled across a story on a new denim shop that opened in The Netherlands called Teneu De NÃmes. According to the co-founder Menno van Meurs, "Our dream was to create a denim haven in Amsterdam". You can check them out at tenuedenimes.com.
from, if you're interested to know.
This week i decided to compare the jeans again, but not as I always have. This time I'm taking the first photographs I have of them and comparing them with photos I took today. It's been seven months sine I bought them on day 1 and just over one month since I washed them on day 183.
marks.
left to show a close up of the denim on day 1 and today, day 216. Such a huge difference in colour, texture and appearance. The jeans feel really fantastic to wear today after six months of wear and one wash. Smooth and really comfortable. There is somehing about the feeling you get when putting on a pair of new raw denim jeans though.
Below 's a list of websites I have mentioned on this blog in the past, but never in a complete list in one blog post. Most have something or other to do with jeans or denim. Others have really good forums where you can have all your questions answered. The rest has some news about denim or jeans or how to clean them, wash them or look after them. Happy reading, till next week.
