Hasta La Ideas

Advertorial content: 
 In an industry built on traditionalism and heritage before innovation, G-Star RAW continues to push the envelope with next-generation design. When the company first introduced the Elwood in 1996, the denim world hadn’t seen a jean with articulated and reinforced knees. Rather than stopping there, G-Star…

Continue Reading…

Designers Jason Ferro and Jason Briggs launch a menswear brand celebrating the inventor of the riveted jean

Born in Riga, Latvia in 1831, Jacob Youphes changed his name to Jacob Davis when he moved to the US in 1854. After series of his businesses failed, Davis, a tailor, reverted to his original skills to make ends meet. A prophetic meeting with a customer inspired the creation…

Continue Reading…

Jeans made from recycled brown beer bottles in NYC

As the name implies, I AM NOT A VIRGIN uses recycled—non virgin—materials to produce their jeans and T-shirts. Now nearly four years into the business, founder Peter Heron is reaching out to his audience with a Kickstarter to keep the NYC-based label alive.

As with many entrepreneurial ventures, IANAV has diverged from its original path over time. Heron began by making prototype jeans from fabric scraps collected at various Chinese manufacturing mills with the goal to reduce factory waste, but it didn’t seem to be working. Spurred on by a friendly tip in early 2011 Heron started experimenting with a new American-made fabric of 75% cotton and 25% recycled synthetics, including brown beer bottles collected from recycling factories. Although the recycled percentage doesn’t seem like much, Heron explains it’s actually more stable this way. “You need a certain amount of virgin cotton for durability,” he says. “It’s the same as if you were making denim from scraps, the right balance of polyester and cotton will give you a long-lasting jean.”

The process of breaking down the beer bottles to a thread-like material is just about as complicated as one would imagine. Once collected in a recycling facility, the bottles are sorted and ground, labels, caps and all into small chips. The chips are then placed in a water bath where the paper and scraps float to the top and the usable chips sink. From here the usable chips are ground down even further into a fine particle, which is actually the same compound found in polyester. The particle is then melted and squeezed through a high-pressure nozzle, creating a continuous strand of loose material ready to be twisted into yarn, and subsequently blended with virgin cotton and woven into denim.

To show the unique properties of this particle, IANAV has created a limited run of 400 brown beer bottle jeans, stitched inside out to reveal the unique weave. Heron says these fit more like a comfortable straight leg trouser than a jean, as they’ve been washed without dye. The standard IANAV men’s jeans, on the other hand, are dyed a dark indigo and left raw, while the washed women’s jean is woven with 1% elasticity for stretch.

Armed with the knowledge he’s gained, Heron has brought on a partner—Walt Connelly, former executive creative director at JWT and Ogilvy—to keep the creative train moving. Once funded the two have big plans for the company. “We will eventually have different lines of jeans made from green soda bottles, blue water bottles, and my original idea of using fabric scraps collected at the manufacturing mills,” says Heron. “We’re also making T-shirts that are made with recycled food tray (tri-blend black color), clear water bottles (white color), discarded x-ray film (light gray color) and in the future empty yogurt cartons. The T-shirts are super soft and feel great.”

To help support Heron and I AM NOT A VIRGIN make a pledge at their Kickstarter page. For $55 you’ll get a limited edition T-shirt made from recycled food trays or water bottles, for $100 or more you’ll be rewarded with a pair of indigo jeans and so on depending on amount of pledge. For those feeling particularly philanthropic, a pledge of $5000 earns you a pair of limited edition brown beer bottle jeans along with whole slew of goodies like t shirts, VIP acess to future parties and a heads up on to-be-released jeans. While you’re there you’ll notice Heron’s other crusade—keeping the rights to his tongue-in-cheek brand name, which is being disputed by Virgin (they suggest slightly less captivating names like I AM NOT CHASTE or I AM NOT PURE). There’s a petition in IANAV’s favor if you’re so inclined.

For a more detailed look at I AM NOT A VIRGIN jeans see the slideshow.

See the manufacturing process at Cone Mills

Generally considered the arbiter of denim, Self Edge recently took a trip to Greensboro, North Carolina to visit the world’s oldest denim mill and document the making of Roy‘s new denim. Designed from warp to weft by Roy Slaper himself, the custom denim also marks the first unsanforized fabric produced by Cone Mills for anyone in more than 60 years.

The insightful short shows the fabric come to life as huge scans of simultaneously selected thread move through the denim production process and into massive vats of 100% pure indigo dye. Whipped around like salt water taffy the denim strands are eventually woven together to form brilliantly dark raw denim weighing in at 14.5oz per square yard—which actually swells to 16.25oz after a hot water soak. Described by Self Edge as simply a “tough fabric,” the new Roy denim is dyed with the darkest indigo Cone to produce a unique wash that’ll only evolve with age.

The new run of Roy jeans have been tweaked to improve fit and will be available in an adjusted version of Roy’s straight and slim fits. Look to Self Edge in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City this Saturday, 24 March 2012 when the latest Roy jeans will go on sale at 12pm in each respective time zone and online at 9am (PDT).

Custom denim built by brothers at Northern Sweden’s Unionville shop

There’s a special level of appreciation for denim in Sweden. Acne, arguably the country’s most directional label, began as a project to make a few pairs of jeans for the founders’ friends. Fast forward to today and, on top of Acne, there are a host of denim brands whose cuts have endeared them to the fickle undercurrent of raw denim lovers including Nudie, Cheap Monday and other smaller brands who specialize in working with raw denim. Perhaps it’s the country’s affinity for utilitarian apparel, its strong subculture scene or maybe simply because Swedes gravitate toward quality above other more aesthetic attributes.

Almost a year to the day of its opening, we took a trip to Unionville, a specialist denim and workwear emporium on Stockholm’s Södermalm island to speak to Douglas Luhanko, who co-founded the store with his brother, Hampus and fellow denim specialist, Fredrik Johansson. Unionville sits on a quiet street behind its sister store, Sivletto—Stockholm’s Rock a Billy paradise—stocking a carefully selected blend of Japanese brands like The Flat Head and Iron Heart alongside classics including Levis and Wrangler and local labels Denim Demon and Blue Highway.

Blue Highway marks the work of the Luhanko brothers, whose passion for denim runs much deeper than just designing it. “We started six years ago,” explains Douglas. “My brother and I were still in a small town in Northern Sweden and we’ve always has this shared love of jeans and the history of denim itself. So Blue HIghway actually started out as a blog where we talked about vintage denim, its cultural references and history,” says Luhanko.

Pointing to one of Unionville’s hand-sourced machines, Douglas tells the story of how he and his brother acquired it after seeing a local advertisement—although it was only a single-seam stitch, it was enough to start with, and Blue Highway began to morph from a blog into what is arguably Sweden’s only truly custom denim brand. “Despite living at the time in Eskilstuna and working from a small basement there was a clear benefit in the small, isolated town in that it’s got a really long, industrial past,” says Douglas. “So we were able to pick up more machines over time, which are the ones hissing in our workroom here at Unionville.”

“I love how raw denim is brought to life by the person wearing it,” he adds. “Even though it may look like a normal pair, the owner knows that behind each line, fade, mark and crinkle is its own personal story.” While the brand has been growing organically for six years, the brothers have been involved in garment-making for much longer. Sharing a strong desire to return to the ideals of an 18th-century tailor, the Luhankos create everything from scratch for each client.

As Blue Highway began to pick up more clients, the pair began their never-ending search for authentic deadstock rolls of denim. “We’ve been through about 15 different types of denim,” Douglas says. “At the start we just hunted on Ebay but in Sweden that’s really expensive. We’ve gotten better at sourcing as time has passed,” he continues, pulling out their latest find, Cone Mills deadstock. “This one was meant for Levis, and it’s a little wider than the narrow shuttle loom denim we’ve had in the past,” he explains. “It’s about 11 ounces, and not so slubby like you’d get from Japan, but already now, when I feel it, I can see the possibilities.”

The brothers make everything in a workroom at the rear of the store, in full view of visitors. “Each pair takes around six hours to make,” Douglas points out, going on to explain that Blue Highway will never be about the money. “For us, it’s about the attitude of creation itself and paying a genuine homage to each piece of fabric and exploring the limits of our own creativity and cratsmanship at the same time.” He is quick to stress that their brand will always be completely handmade, so their vision remains imprinted on every aspect of the finished garment.

Given the duo’s pedigree as denim historians, Blue Highway’s cut is proudly based around a classic 1950s five-pocket cut. Each pair is single-stitched and overlocked on original, period sewing machines, while belt loops and bartacks on the rear pockets are completed by hand. Blue Highway denim sports special brass hardware that’s embossed in the workshop, and hand-cut, stamped leather patches. Perhaps in homage to Levis, Douglas is quick to mention that they don’t do riveted pockets. That said, they have added their own special twist on the coin pocket, which is sized large enough to fit a watch, with a slightly scooped cut to enable faster access to its contents.

The cost for this labor intensive process runs around 3,000 SEK (approximately $440), available at Unionville.