Against my better judgment, I ended up ordering another pair of knicker shorts this season. I’ve come to prefer them when up in mountains as they allow for more freedom of movement and plus they flat out look cool.
From Engineered Garments (the pair I just received). The cotton fabric is pretty thick and is the same type used in their fatigue pants.
A vintage Lee ad from 1953. “Steel foreman and his family demonstrate the good looks and comfort of America’s most modern work clothes.”
Rin Tanaka’s latest book “King of Vintage” documents part of the collection owned by Heller’s Cafe, a local dealer of very old clothing. Over two hundred items are shown, covering everything from sport uniforms to motorcycle jackets.
Get it from InspirationLA.com, Self Edge, or your local Kinokuniya book store.
Update 5/19: Men’s Mentore has some more scans.
Update 5/20: J.Crew is now selling it too.
I haven’t been able to stop studying this old photo on shorpy that Pete linked to this morning on twitter. If you were to summarize Rin Tanaka’s Harley Davidson Book of Fashions into one picture, this might do a pretty good job.
Washington, D.C., circa 1925. “H. Addison Bowie.” A motorcycle dealer on H Street. With “Harley-Davidson” in the big window under “Distributors,” and a smaller sign upstairs. National Photo Company glass negative.
Make sure you view the large hi-res version. Some highlights:
Almost done with bag posts! During my last stop at the mil surplus store (see previous post), I picked up this vintage aviator’s kit bag for use on the days when I have to pack a ton of gear. According to the markings on it, it’s over 15 years old and was made here in the U.S.
For a slightly smaller version, here’s a repro of a USAAF Type AN 6505-1 aviator kit bag as sold by Oi Polloi as part of the Heritage Research x Eastman Leather pack. It can also be purchased separately (sans Heritage Research branding) straight from History Preservation.
Post inspired by these two pictures:
Michael Bastian holding a duffle bag on the left, and Arik Roper in the Engineered Garments Spring/Summer 2010 lookbook.
From the Federal Army & Navy Surplus store on 1st Ave in Seattle.
Since the early 1970’s, the Porsche Design Studio has produced a wide assortment of contemporary accessories, tools, and home goods (the group was founded by F.A. Porsche, and is a part of Porsche SE). Some were quite groundbreaking for their time and continue to influence designers today.
After all these years they’re still going strong, and my favorite pieces recently created by them that I use regularly are a santoku chef’s knife and a mechanical pencil (both are very comfortable to use for long periods of time). The lighters are quite cool as well.
Here are a few ads showing some of their creations from the 80’s and early 90’s. The older sunglasses in particular have a bit of a cult following and can fetch high prices through vintage dealers and ebay.
Rin Tanaka’s Inspiration meetup took place down in LA last week and Albert Thomas was able do a great writeup and report from the event for Styleforum.net. Hopefully Rin will decide to do this again next year – I will definitely make the trip!
I’ll admit that I felt a bit out of the loop a year ago when I first heard of Rin Tanaka and his “My Freedamn!” book series which covered Americana elements from the 30s-70s of motorcycle, surf, hot rod, and hippie fashion scenes. It was a bit like finding out that Steve McQueen, Elvis Presley, Brian Wilson, and Jim Morrison had made a home movie documenting their road trip weekend binge in Las Vegas. When I got the call about the two-day show, I knew it wouldn’t take much coaxing to get me to trek down to that hangar in Santa Monica.
Continue reading more.
Related: Previous post on Inspiration.
Image by Albert Thomas for Styleforum.net.
Rin Tanaka has put together an amazing event for February:
The kulture recycling & vintage fashion event “Inspiration” will be hosted by Rin Tanaka, the author of the “My Freedamn!” book series. Under the big theme of his life, “vintage fashion,” this event will be held at one of the coolest “event halls” in Los Angeles, “Barker Hanger,” which is located inside Santa Monica Airport. As the photo on this page shows, this vintage-looking space is mostly used as vintage airplane storage for repair crews, but on February 12th and 13th, 2010, this huge indoor space (capacity: 3,000 people) will be filled with many vintage fashion fans from around the world!
During this two-day show, a total of 60 vendors and exhibitors will set up unique and very special booths displaying their own inspiration: 35 vintage fashion dealers, 10 designer & artist booths, 8 charity garage sales, and 7 special exhibitions. Their business concept in this vintage atmosphere is to “buy and sell inspiration.” Actually, many “kulture recycling” products, mainly vintage American fashions manufactured in the 1910s-1980s, will be displayed everywhere in this hall. Vintage fans will get amazing opportunities to view so many vintage items. Most items will be “for sale,” except for special exhibition decorations.
Read more about it and purchase tickets on inspirationla.com. I’d fly down for this if I wasn’t tied up at work. ;_;
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