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Japanese interest in the 501 came at a time when Levi’s American operations had moved its merchandising mix away from the classic fit and toward tight jeans, corduroys, and surfer pants. In 1984, Levi’s Japan made a conscious break from this strategy and reinstated the 501 as the center of its promotional campaigns. This immediately boosted sales,
But as much as Japanese consumers loved Levi’s 501s in the abstract, the official pairs available from local retailers did not live up to the legend. A Men’s Club’s jeans guide from the late 1980s noted, “The famed traditional Levi’s 501, Lee 200, and Wrangler 13MWZ have changed quite a bit in terms of quality. For example, they are economizing on the dyeing process and using cheaper open-end spinning.
They worked with textile mills to move away from the slower ring-spun thread to the faster open-end spun variety. This fundamentally changed the way the material absorbed indigo dye.
real leather patches (used until the mid-1950s), hidden rivets only visible on the inside of the jeans (1937–1966), and a “big E” on the red Levi’s logo tag (1936–1969).
The handful of vintage stores in America ignored workwear for relics of classic Hollywood—Hawaiian shirts, bowling shirts, zoot suits, and colorful gabardine shirts.
Thrift stores in New York City routinely cut off the legs of rare Levi’s to make jean shorts in the summer months.
Right under the noses of Americans, Japanese, British, and French buyers descended upon the U.S. and smuggled out most of the country’s deadstock. By the mid-1990s, there was very little left.
at the end of the 1990s, Americans caught on to what was happening in Japan.
Farley Enterprises. His cousin Hugh Farley rented rooms in small town Radissons on the East Coast and advertised in the newspaper for people to bring by old Levi’s and Nikes for sale. Hugh shipped the subsequent haul to John in Orem, who would take bids on a Web site from eight hundred Japanese store owners.
guide called “Wanted in Japan,” which he sent to thrift shops across the entire United States. The booklet detailed what to look for in old garments and set standard prices for each item.
Yōsuke Ōtsubo conservatively estimates that two-thirds of the rarest American clothing items, especially of the denim and workwear variety, remain in Japanese hands.
in early 1989, store manager Hidehiko Yamane told Tsujita of a radical plan to make new jeans that closely reproduced the unique features of vintage American models.
The first attempt came in 1980 when Big John asked its fabric supplier, Kurabō, to make denim on old Toyoda shuttle looms normally used to make sailcloth. They then used the selvedge denim as the selling point for Big John Rare—an ¥18,000 ($225 in 2015 dollars) pair of jeans with imported Talon zippers, real copper rivets, and a label made from traditional washi paper. At three times the cost of a normal pair, Big John Rare found few customers. Moreover, its failure scared off other mass manufacturers
Kurabō instead focused its spinning prowess on re-creating the unique touch-and-feel of classic American denim. In 1985, the mill debuted mura-ito, a “slubby” yarn that used cutting-edge technology to replicate the unevenness common to fabrics before the era of mass production.
Denim made from this yarn faded in vertical lines k...
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Kurabō sold the first batch of its mura-ito denim to French lifestyle brands Et Vous, Chevignon, and Chipie.
Returning to Japan in 1985, Tagaki founded a brand with a pseudo-French name, Studio D’artisan,
His masterpiece, the DO-1, debuted in 1986 with features not seen on jeans for decades, such as the back-buckle from 1930s-era Levi’s. Parodying the iconic Levi logo, the DO-1’s patch showed two pigs, rather than horses, pulling apart a pair of jeans.
Studio D’artisan’s jeans sold poorly.
worked with Okayama denim mill Nihon Menpu to make premium textiles on tiny 3-foot-wide selvedge looms, dyed with the traditional hon-aizome natural indigo.
Levi’s Japan. Executive Hajime Tanaka
Wanting to go the full mile for discerning Japanese customers, Tanaka requested to have Cone Mills restart production of selvedge denim, but headquarters balked at the request. He eventually discovered that the French jeans’ denim came from Kurabō, and asked the mill for an exclusive supply. In 1987, Levi’s Japan debuted its first replica model, the 701XX—a reproduction of the 1936 501XX with a back-buckle—a year before Europe and two years before America made their own vintage remakes.
After unraveling the fabric to examine the yarn, Tsujita eventually concluded that old jeans used cotton with a much longer staple.
five major independent jeans brands in Ōsaka—Studio D’artisan, Denime, Evis, Full Count, and Warehouse—known today as the “Ōsaka Five.”
In the late 1980s, the Real McCoy’s of Kōbe made a nearly perfect re-creation of the American A-2 flight jacket.
In 1985, Hirata left John Bull to form his own company, Capital,
Hirata later found a new soulmate in 45rpm, a brand with a unique aesthetic blending American vintage, French resort wear, Italian tailoring, and traditional Japanese craftsmanship.
Later that year, Toshikiyo Hirata called his son back from 45rpm to start an original brand, Kapital.
Levi’s never owned looms, Cone Mills’ older Draper looms were sold off for scrap rather than to the Japanese, and Japanese denim mills already owned higher-quality Toyoda selvedge looms.
In late 2006, two stores opened in the U.S. dedicated to jeans from Japan: New York’s Blue in Green and San Francisco’s Self Edge.
Iron Heart, The Flat Head, Strike Gold, Dry Bones, and Sugar Cane—
In flower arrangement and martial arts, students learn the basics by imitating the kata, a single authoritative “form.” Pupils must first protect the kata, but after many years of study, they break from tradition and then separate to make their own kata—a system described in the term shu-ha-ri (“protecting, breaking, and separating”).
