Reinterpret vintage.

And carry it through as pure product-out — led by the making, not by the market.
The five-pocket jeans I began on that decision are now finished.

The development records I have written so far used AI for the fine points — final checks and the like.
I know this is nothing unusual anymore, but this article, the one I am writing now, I want to write entirely in my own words.
It may well be that borrowing AI's help would produce an easier read than writing it all myself —
but a product I made by facing it in dead earnest, I will explain in my own words, in dead earnest.

Finished, but not perfect

Interested, but no time to read closely.
Some of you may be exactly there — so let me put the conclusion first.

The plan — not to twist in the wash, but to use the wash to bring the twist back — succeeded.

There is a reason for the hedged phrasing: controlling every bit of twist across the whole garment is close to impossible.
I have reached the point where, at a glance, they read as pants that are loomstate and yet not twisted. That much is realized — but observe down to the true fine detail, and the correction is not so complete that no distortion remains at all.
Still, I think that is no great problem.

Because what was being made here is
a reinterpretation of vintage as FUKUBORI — not a flawlessly beautiful product.

In short:
“Hold every element of vintage in place, and still look untwisted despite being loomstate.”
That was the destination this time, and there we have unmistakably arrived.

Which is to say: this is not a normal thing.
Worn, the impression is of an ordinary five-pocket pant — and yet something feels strange.

For people who handle vintage and replicas every day,
it connects to a “wait, this is loomstate!?” — and even for those less versed,
that strangeness comes through without fail.

The jeans are on hand at NAYA, the gallery shop attached to our atelier in Kojima — I would be glad if you came by,
casually, to experience the strangeness for yourself.
An event, including made-to-order, is planned for October 23, 24, 25 and 26.
Fri, Oct 23: 11:00–19:00
Sat, Oct 24: 12:00–15:00
Sun, Oct 25: 11:00–19:00
Mon, Oct 26: 11:00–19:00
* Note that Saturday the 24th runs shortened hours
* Online sales also open the same day, the 23rd, at 12:00

Product details

Now then — from here I will get into the finer points, touching on the specifications and the thinking behind them.
The denim itself I have covered along the way:
“a fully original fabric, made by analyzing deadstock Big-E.”

Fabric is not my specialty, so there is not much I can lecture on in detail — but let me talk about what I find good in this era.

It is loomstate, yet it carries neither the forties-like grit nor the deep-indigo, THE-VINTAGE level of raw coarseness — instead it has a moderately blue, moderately composed face.

Which naturally means the fading, too, is unlikely to break into those sharp, cracking creases.
I keep it at “unlikely” because no worn-in pair of this denim exists yet — this is still the prediction stage.
(On the premise that size, washing, and the way you wear them have the larger influence on fading.)

I feel the 80s are an important era — a transition you can sense, finishing itself on the way toward completion.

Separating the origin of the idea from the origin of the structure.

For the idea: the masterpiece from around 2000,
Levi’s RED “1st Standard.”
I sampled its thinking — the reinterpretation of vintage.

For the structure:
the “60s 501 Big-E.”
The era the fabric development was built from — and the era I love most,
where the sewing, too, is full of transition. (I forgot to photograph the deadstock in full, so this is a different garment.)

Picking up the intentions of the time

I am a pattern maker — work that builds silhouettes and, at the same time, reads sewing specifications in close detail.
And in observing the clothes of that era, the sewing specs are a crucial point.
Writing all of it would turn heavy and long-winded, so let me start from the points that are clear and interesting.

Thread types and fading

Old jeans were sewn with cotton thread.
In time that changes over to polyester — but changes like that never arrive all at once.
There is a transitional period where cotton and poly sewing threads coexist inside a single pair of jeans.
Cotton thread loses its color as the years pass. Poly thread barely fades at all.
Out of this is born a contrast of thread colors that only becomes visible once the jeans are worn in and faded.

I doubt the people of the time were thinking past the fade — they must have judged that, as sewn, a near-match color was good enough. It feels to me like a design born by accident, and I love it almost unbearably for that.

And the Big-E era I am sampling sits inside exactly that transition.
FUKUBORI adopts it this time as well — except that the cotton portions are changed to what is called core-spun thread.
Core-spun is a hybrid thread: polyester’s strength, with cotton’s fading.

As the color comes down, which threads change, and where? I hope you will enjoy that contrast.

Wrinkles peculiar to loomstate

This image is after the wash — can you see the vertical wrinkles running down the coin pocket?
They occur when the grain of the coin pocket differs from the panel beneath it, and the warp and weft shrink at very different rates.
Called kaminari-jiwa — “lightning wrinkles” — they are one of the details devotees love.

I adopted this as a detail unique to loomstate.
Against a body that is loomstate and yet untwisted, I set a detail only loomstate produces.
That strangeness, too, is one of the points of these jeans.
Do look for it once you wash them.
How will your wrinkles grow?

Selvedge on one side only

Facing the twist —
that meant, in practice, relocating constraints.
As a result, the side-seam selvedge ends up on one side only. The selvedge, as I see it, carries many jobs at once:
・No edge finishing needed on the seam allowance.
・No waste, since the fabric’s edge is put to use.
・It looks good.
・Recognizability — “could that be that brand?”
And on top of these:
・It lets you imagine the marker — how the pieces were laid on the cloth.
For a man who digs clothes, this last one is important, and fascinating.

With RED, it is the selvedge that lets you imagine the marker, and from there imagine a shape that wastes nothing. Feeling that, I half suspect RED’s selvedge work is Rikke Korff’s letter of challenge:
“You can picture it from this, can’t you? Can you?”
A completely embarrassing fantasy, I know. (laughs)

And I have tried to build that element into these jeans as well.
But I will say no more here.
If even one person checks the position and use of the selvedge and starts imagining, nothing could make me happier.

Starting with anyone wondering “what is a marker in the first place?” — whenever we can talk face to face, I will answer anything. Ask away.

A seat curve made by necessity

The shape of the seat pattern is a major element of what makes a 501 look like a 501 — and it is strikingly straight.
I wrote the specifics last time, so I will not spell them out here.
The result: on these jeans, the seat is curved.
Loomstate yet untwisted; unmistakably conscious of the vintage 501, yet with a curve in the seat.
These two points above all come at you as a great strangeness.
Should I embrace this strangeness? For one moment, I stopped and thought.

“This strangeness is the very proof of challenge, and of freshness.”

Having jumped outside the existing frame of vintage denim, of loomstate five-pocket jeans,
strangeness is only natural. Strange and fresh are a hair’s breadth apart — and being able to enjoy that, too,
is the charm of clothing: an industrial product that is also fashion.

No hidden rivets

This time, there are no hidden rivets.
The biggest reason: the garment I referenced for structure does not have them.
I love hidden rivets. To me they are a detail overflowing with the identity of the time — the insistence on driving rivets even if they had to be hidden.

And on the other side,
the fact that someone decided to abolish the hidden rivets they had kept at such lengths is inscribed there too.
So I love their absence just as much.

On top of that, thinking about actual wear, I suspect they are unnecessary.
It bothers me that sitting on them can hurt at times.
Though this owes much to the rivet position and my own habit of wearing jeans low on the hips — it will not be true for everyone.

On the buttons

This time I did not choose iron buttons.
There is an allure only iron can produce — without question.
Even rusting, a defect, can read as charm on old clothes.
But thinking of these as clothes to be worn in daily life from here on, I could not choose on that allure alone.

Here too, the choice is a trade-off.

What I did insist on is the two-prong construction.
Two prongs, bent over and clinched. The look born of that structure is what draws me.
Including the shift toward a single prong, a single button carries the record of how making changed.
Crush to clinch, or bend to clinch.

A difference nobody minds in daily life — but dig into clothes, and places like this start to matter.
Choosing iron as a material, and choosing two prongs as a structure — each deserves its own thought.
These buttons, too, were chosen in the space between use as present-day clothing and the allure I wanted to keep.

The paper patch and its sewing

The patch is paper.
8cm × 6cm — the size you see most — in a 1mm thickness.
I want you to feel its presence as paper.
The attachment is unusual as well: it is sewn in a single continuous run, connected from the stitch along the top of the waistband.
A vintage specification from before that top stitch changed to chain stitch. What was efficient then is inefficient now, and that inefficiency has turned into an insistence — a phenomenon I count as part of the fun.

A counterpart

What I pictured when this project began was
a path where, alongside the reinterpretation, I would also build a FUKUBORI orthodox five-pocket, close to a replica.
This time I gave it up — the fabric ran shorter than expected — but the idea is alive.

And in fact, development in another fabric is already running in parallel.
That one is not yet at completion, but it uses a fabric far more vintage-like than this Big-E fabric.
More grit, a deeper, darker indigo.
And once that is so, a question arises: should the specs stay as they are?

“Fabric is a variable,” I keep saying — and still the urge to optimize comes. Of course it does.
As a result, we are moving toward changing the specifications too.

Split off from this 60s-minded fabric: when the more vintage-feeling loomstate is adopted,
the specs will be turned toward the XX.

And with that XX-spec version,
the plan is to present reinterpretation and reconstruction side by side, so you can compare and weigh them.

This release is in the original fabric, analyzed from a Big-E.
Beyond it, a release that sets reinterpretation and reconstruction side by side — another fabric, XX-minded specs — is in motion.
We are in talks so that our stockists can carry that one to you as well.

Should I be keeping quiet about this for now?
That feeling is in me, more than a little.
“Do that and it won’t sell.”
I received that opinion too — but:

Hide the fact that another option is coming in the near future, and aim for a sell-out now.

That is a choice I decided I must not make.
Release this with the later option kept secret,
and someone who bought it might think:
“If I’d known, I’d have wanted the other one.”

A cunning way and a clever way are always a hair’s breadth apart, I find.
That is exactly why I want to move with one question as my axis: will this leave someone feeling bad?

Soon,
pre-order sales of REDENIM — the FUKUBORI reinterpretation in our original fabric — will begin.
Beyond it we will produce again in a different fabric, but with loomstate denim scarce these days, we will not be able to make many.

As I wrote above —
the jeans are on hand at NAYA, the gallery shop attached to our atelier in Kojima,
and I would be glad if you came by, casually, to experience the strangeness yourself.
An event, including made-to-order, is planned for October 23, 24, 25 and 26.

Fri, Oct 23: 11:00–19:00
Sat, Oct 24: 12:00–15:00
Sun, Oct 25: 11:00–19:00
Mon, Oct 26: 11:00–19:00
* Note that Saturday the 24th runs shortened hours
* Online sales also open the same day, the 23rd, at 12:00

I want this to reach everyone who loves dressing well and enjoys clothes, of course —
and I would love for it to find the hands of people in the industry who see something interesting in Fukuwohoru and FUKUBORI.