Jacket Porn, the Best of the Best

The dealers at the "Inspiration" show are the best of the best modern day craft producers and vintage clothing historians out there. These people represent the points of a vast pyramid of pickers and processors trying to collect and disseminate the long lost history and technique of my grandfather and his peers clothing production. Making a living out of history is random at the best of times and parodies the hunter gatherer model of primitive man! Hunting and gathering vintage antique clothing that is traded, migrating slowly upward until it lands on the behind of Bruce Springsteen or Cheryl Crow or maybe in the hands of some fantastic design genius who wants to copy a pocket or a lost sewing construction technique. For me this show was all about Jacket porn. My neighbor Mike of PatandMike shows up in every Rin Tanaka book as one of the worlds great leather jacket collector/dealers and has been a good customer of mine for years. He let me photograph some of his awesome jackets. Bill Wall Leather sent one of their guys over....here is a picture of a jacket that they have been offered 25k for and still will not sell. These guys are at the highest end of custom exclusivity and authenticity. Just check out all the rockstars that are into their stuff.

I met up with lots of buddies...if you read or follow Lightning Magazine, MyFreedamn, or any of Rin's books, Free and Easy Magazine et al then you would be surprised to find that all these faces are the people behind these genius collections. Pictured here is Larry Heller of Hellers Cafe...The Inspiration show was for the launch of his book King of Vintage. Bill Wall Leathers sent over a 25K custom jacket. My fellow Canucks were here from the West Coast with their Viberg boots. And that cool red truck is Christophe Loiren and crew of Mr. Freedom.  He has launched his own super sucessful brand of "vintage"clothing (its not copies, its not inauthentic).  Everybody is hanging out having fun!