eggs & wool

Confessions of a Shopkid, vol. 1

Mother of Pearl: The Carhartt Western Denim Shirt, Reincarnated

or

A Treatise on the Excavation of Deadstock

When I excavate, the first thing I try to discern after my instinctive awe subsides is the product’s context. When was it made? What the hell is it? Who bought these? are all questions that race around the one, tiny track that is my brain.

I work at a shop that was opened right after WWII to sell army/navy surplus. Over the decades, we segued into outdoor gear and apparel. Over the years, we outfitted the hunters, the hearty, the workers (the Big Dig was just outside the front door, mind you), and as these men grew roots in the once satisfied middle class, they were afforded the leisure time to peruse the outdoor activities that put them back in touch with their collective, and national, spirit of adventure. We catered to them when they were fresh back from the Big One, we put the clothes on their backs when they got good jobs. We even sold them Gore Tex when they decided it would be fun to hike some god forsaken mountain to the very top. 

I have an obsessive compulsion about digging. I have to cut myself off. How many products do we have in the store? I wonder. Maybe a million. Who knows?

Spoiler Alert: most of the good stuff is gone. It makes sense, right? Occam’s Razor. It’s not like we escaped all rhyme and reason in some timeless capsule. Is it?

I first saw the APC X Carhartt project on this Selectism, and thought- wait, that? That old stuff is new again?

When I first got into the use of the blogosphere to promote the store I work at, Mr. Fox of 10engines paid me a visit at Tent City and I gave him what he called a “Nickel Tour.” During the course of our shootin the bull, I discerned that he was quite the Carhartt aficionado, and on both Continents, being both Scot and American.  He told me that the OG denim western was a highly coveted item on both sides of the Atlantic. He told me this and that about its details, and how to know if I’d found, “the one.” I nodded and tried not to let on that we were but feet from one at the time. Sorry, James. And then I saw the same shirt offered by APC, almost verbatim in its design vernacular.

There were two of these shirts when I started down at the Tent Mines, but someone must have bought the other. I’ve got one now, though. It’s funny: we’ve had products sitting on the shelves for years at original retail, less ten percent that are selling on ebay at twice that, or being reinterpreted by the cutting edge of contemporary fashion and sold for triple. Year after year, they get rotated off the floor, packed away, dusted off a year or two later, sometimes even ten. Sometimes, never. 

This is one such piece. I have a couple other choice flannels, but this is for the Denim Heads, this is American denim when the cotton was grown in America and there was no other nation as concentrated on doing this in the world. This is when denim was an American Idiom. This shirt was a chance to see, feel, hold, wear one of the last living examples of American, Union made Denim that was manufactured in a purely “workwear” context. This was a product that never had a mark up for “design,”  and was made by people who were earning a good, union wage somewhere in a neighborhood you knew. 

The Horrible Old Man told me that western shirts have snap buttons so that if a steer’s horn gets caught in your shirt, it will just pop off before it tears.

I would like to hold the APC version in my hand to be able to take note of any difference in fabric weight between the original and the refined interpretation. I had the occasion to tour the exquisite shop Union Made when I was out visiting my buddy Ginno who works down the street at Self Edge SF, and they had the Euro Carhartt Roper pants in what was billed as duck cloth, but was surely a thin approximation thereof. Although they had nailed the fit, the hand was like that of a standard khaki. And new, yes, they had a better drape than a stiff pair made for work; they appealed “off the rack.” 

With workwear, there is always an inextricably linked story. The product must have provenance like a piece of high art in order to hold up to the scrutiny of a literalist. But design isn’t a bible, I reminded myself, and breathed a little when I realized that the Roper Pants by Carhartt EU still look pretty cool. I guess I should forgive that much. But where are they made? Tunisia, I think it was. Or Turkey. Either way, they certainly weren’t made by any factory that Carhartt would have contracted. At least not when the products that provided inspiration for this line were made. And there again, I have to remind myself that the reason that American manufacturing jobs went abroad was because American workers could no longer afford to pay for the goods they were making. 

So should I be skeptical about the prospect of a fashion line doing a collaboration with a workwear line? I guess it depends entirely upon how the product is perceived. If it’s going to be worn as fashion, then it doesn’t much matter. All that matters is how you make it look when you rock it. Is it costumey if it is worn only as an effect? Some people pull some pieces off, and I can’t land on a real answer. It can’t be judged.

One of the funnest parts of my job is getting to see the juxtaposition of bygone artifacts in the context of modern tastes. A big part of the reason that someone hasn’t already done what I’m doing on eggs&wool is that this old timey, heritage apparel and gear that we have hasn’t been in vogue for umpteen-odd years. There are actually a ton of people who asked “why wool when fleece?” or couldn’t fathom why waxed canvas over Gore-Tex. We’re just a rare combination of ingredients: Tent City has been open for decades, which affords it credibility and reputation that cannot be achieved on the fast track. We also have things that have remained in stock and have never been for sale since they came into the building, or at least, shortly thereafter. We have a history of eccentric, erratic buying, fueled by egos and alcohol, and a model that urged: no matter what it was, if it was dirt cheap, people would buy it, or, at least, we would. Thus, stuff has piled up, and every day I find something new.

And yes, I am fully aware of the irony that I make a name for myself and for my store by promoting our “deadstock” inventory, which is rapidly getting bought up, thanks to the exposure. But we are in a cut throat business, and it’s a card we have to play in order to survive. 

It is my chief aim to impart some measure of background, even if it’s trivial, for the garment: hopefully I can inform the customer of the company by whom, and the conditions for which, the product was made. This is a labor of love, for reference use only. Please pay attention.