How I Spend My Summer Vacations: Real Gear for the Real World

In many of my blog posts and commentary on other peoples blogs I make a point to speak about the historical differences between fashion design and use in the past vs. the present.  Companies often frame the discussion as "made in the U.S.A." vs. foreign import.  I think that is a silly premise.  Quality goods are quality goods if they are made well, designed well, and produced ethically. Those are the values that should be considered.  The Japanese make the best American style denim in the world.  Japan was considered one of the first enemies of domestic American jobs back in the 1970s.  The real value of well made clothing in the historical sense was its functionality, durability and beauty.  Workwear had to be made to last.  If a pair of boots cost the equivelent of half a weeks wages, those boots better last!  That is the paradigm of quality, and in Japan where living space is a premium, quality multipurpose wardrobes are the norm.  I believe this gives young Japanese both the motivation and inclination to purchase high priced well made goods!

Every summer I spend my time as much as possible in the Ontario wilderness.  I pack up my best light weight gear into my çanoe and travel overland from lake to lake and camp to camp to clear my head of lifes stresses and find solace from my urban life. 
Algonkians and Iroquois used the canoe as a form of transportation.  Native peoples and fur traders could travel from the Atlantic coast through the Great Lakes region all the way to Manitoba and James Bay.  In my province there are more than 250 000 lakes and this makes for one of  the greatest ancient natural transportation systems in the world.  In the wilderness the quality of your gear is paramount.  For one week of canoeing Nancy and I each take: 1 pair long pants, 1 shorts/swim suit, 2 short sleve shirts, 1 long sleve shirt, 3 underwear, 3 socks, 1 fleece, 1 hat, 1 rain jacket, 1 boots, 1 1940s motorcycle belt and 1 sandal.  That's it for clothing so your clothes better be good.  This trip I took my new 1970s Herman's boots I bought on Ebay a few months back.  They were incredible.  The boots have great summer traction and ankle support for portaging..but they dry out quickly and are warm and comfortable. 

My packs tend to be U.S. military issue packs.  U.S. military gear is some of the best quality out there.  After the failure of my North Face rain gear last year leading to hypothermia in October when I was rained on in my canoe for 5 hours, I switched out to military rain gear.  US Vietnam Jungle Issue ripstop pants are far and away the best tripping pants I've ever owned, they dry out in 10 minutes with body heat and are indestructible.  For summer only, my LL Bean fleecy cotton shirt is acceptable and makes a nice pillow lining too!

This year I took a Champion ringspun 70s t-shirt.  It was both reasonably warm and rip resistant.  But even better the thick cotton tended to absorb a lot of sweat and be difficult for the mosquitoes to bite through!!! My sunglasses are from the best company in the world Maui Jim.  As silly as the brand name is..their glasses have the best polarization I have seen since Revo's (you can see right through the waters surface and not canoe over rocks)...and they have the best customer service I have ever experienced.  They replaced two broken lenses on two pairs for free!   I also bring my 1920s folding reading glasses.  You never know when you are going to have to tie a fishing knot or do some other delicate work.  The truth is when you are out in the woods for a week, travelling every day there is little outside help or opportunity to fix anything.  Equipment failures are disasterous so the best quality and redundancy are your two best friends!  That is what is valued in the old vintage mindset.  Multi-use, high quality, built to last, repairable workwear. 

Katsu and Custom Belts

I have been suffering blog fatigue of late.  I noticed there has been a proliferation of blogs out in the world and it seems that mine has not been growing traffic. I am working on reaching out to the people who love vintage more and more.  So in the upcoming weeks I will be launching my own website for my leather jackets, plus a new blog which will hopefully capture the travails and trials of trying to start a clothing brand.  I will apologize in advance for not posting enough...however with the overwhelming need to "make money" and take care of my sick dad I have just not felt up to it.  That being said..I have been meaning to shout out to my good friend Katsu of Rockahula  in Japan. 

Part of my job is meeting up with my friends and other like minded vintage nuts to share information and ideas.  While in Tokyo my good friend Kat took a train for an hour and a half to come meet Nancy and me at our hotel.  We had an excellent day just chatting and showing off our stuff.  Kat is a long time customer of mine..we met years and years ago at the beginnings of Ebay.  Two guys the same age on opposite sides of the planet in the same business who never even shook hands!  For years I've been selling Kat rare vintage pieces for his store and finally after years of emailing we met in person.  What a great guy!  Kat not only represents vintage style for his city...but he is a locus point for "vintage lifestyle".  He is committed to the clothing and the culture of early fashion.  I hope to be selling some of his hand cut, hand finished and hand studded motorcycle gear on my upcoming website.  His style is amazing and his gear is amazing.  It was sooo cool to see my jackets on such a cool guy fitting perfectly...and to see his awesome belts on Nance!  Thanks Kat!

Frank Frazetta, R.I.P. ...Why I Love Heros and Leather

Unknown to most of my readers I started out life as an unusually talented artist.  I could draw realistic faces and humans by the time I was 5 years old.  I have always been obsessed with drawing and painting and spent most of the eighties and early nineties making art.  Between Film Studies, art making and vintage clothing I divided up and occupied most of my time.  I taught myself to oil paint between 9 and 15 years of age.  My inspiration was my massive Marvel comic collection and the cover art of every science fiction book that I could get my hands on and read.

  I obsessed over the art of Boris Vallejo and Frank Frazetta.  The raw sexuality of their images, the fantasy worlds they depicted of armour clad hero's, scantily robust women in repose, the renaissance lighting and composition fueled my teenage imagination.  Between Conan the Barbarian and Wolverine and the X men, my mind waded through the morass of teenage pressures through pure visual escapism.  When I laid paint to canvass copying the sumptuous curves of a Frazetta female or a Vallejo heroine I could feel the flesh in the paint.  I loved these guys and today one of my hero's passed on into the abyss and into the pantheon of Scifi art gods.  If you trace the styles and imagery of Frazetta, and look at earlier influences like Joseph Clement Coll and J. Allen St. John..you see the stamp of  modern photography, film noir and the cool new aesthetics of the industrial age.  These factors help create the sleek looks of new design in the garment industry that lead to the Flash Gordon like designs of Leather Togs, Buco and many of the great motorcycle jacket companies.  It may seem tenuous but I owe a great deal to these great image makers.

Hot Jackets and Random Thoughts!

I had recently been given a quizzical look when I used a term that I had never heard until my arrival in Los Angeles and attendance at a Ralph Lauren RRL party, "Nouveau Appalachian".  I enjoyed the perplexed raised eyebrow and moved on.  This of course is now in my lexicon.  Over my years of subcultural styles I participated in multitudes of "looks". We all have, all you have to do is go back into your year book in high school and through the window of time you will discover that you too had a "look".  With vintage dealing I am routinely selling articles of clothing to clothing nerds of all types, mainstream, sidestream and extreme!  There are many emergent styles for guys between the ages of 25 and 50 that are typical for my clients.  There are Bobber motorcyclists, military fetishists, surfer nuts, car club junkies and these new style of "Appalachianists" lol.  I fall into all those categories due to my huge closet and propensity to live inside factories with heavy equipment.  Since starting my blog there is now a dirge of bloggers out there celebrating every component of the cultural tapestry.  Blogging seems to be the last open free space where people reuse and recycle culture without fear of the "G" men coming down and whisking us away to prison.   Most of the blogs dont bother writing a whole lot but they sure dig up beautiful images from early 20th century North America and celebrate the "working man".  Perhaps we have a nostalgia for this simpler time, perhaps the longing is for a lost set of morals and ethics, or maybe it is some long ago sense of purpose.  Whatever the reason, this backward looking fetishistic obsession has translated itself nicely into both vintage and new clothing.  I too get a tear whenever I go to  Michael Williams A Continuous Lean or Rivethead and see scenes from the past and memories.  I'm really glad that there is a space where bloggers can share both their personal and public bricollage of style and imagery to create the future.  Im superbly happy when people send me pictures and stories of their own families, parents and uncles and their old leather jackets!

This jacket appears to be a Levis work jacket from the 1890s its incredible!  Carters was a Famous workwear and denim brand and this is clearly an early piece from the 1930s.  And the horsehide is one of the finest condition ones I've seen from my own city of Toronto from the 1930s.