Nice to meet you. It's the person inside the Fellowes store.
Through this blog, we would like to share the appeal and background of the products that could not be fully explained in the catalog or online store.
Thank you very much.
In this first installment, I would like to write about jeans.
As you know, the origin of jeans dates back to the American West Coast in the mid-1800s.
The immigrants from all over the world dreamed of getting rich quickly, and the West Coast area at that time was booming with a gold rush.
© ullstein bild Dtl.
It is one of the famous anecdotes that Jacob Davis developed and manufactured work pants with rivet reinforcement for the miners who continue to work hard in such a tough site, and quickly established them in their uniforms. I guess.
However, jeans did not enter the fashion context more than half a century later.
After the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the so-called Great Depression of 1929 cast a dark shadow over American industry.
© Associated Press
In particular, when the dairy and meat industries, which were one of the major industries in the west, were hit by a major recession, the ranchers themselves came up with an acrobatic breakthrough with ample land and many cattle and horses.
The Dude Ranch business, which is well-known, began to emerge as a ranch management like a theme park where you can interact with animals while being embraced by nature.
On the other hand, the East Coast, including New York, was undergoing rapid modernization, and it was also a time when skyscrapers began to emerge.
The famous Empire State Building was completed in 1931, just two years after the Great Depression.
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Dude Ranch in the West must have seemed quite nostalgic to those living in the fast-growing city.
Away from the hustle and bustle of the city, Dude Ranch has become one of the national leisure activities as a cosplay park where you can enjoy the good old American traditional style, that is, cowboys and cowgirls.
Taking advantage of the momentum at that time, many denim makers with huge inventories also suffered from the Great Depression.
This is the reason why the West Coast's unique cowboys and their lifestyles were enlivened with various advertisements, and one format of jeans = Western was established with a strong commercial spirit. (Continued after the second bullet)
Among the long-selling products that Fellowes boasts, the one that has been loved for a particularly long time is [500SW], which was inspired by the vintage around the 1920s, when jeans were still completely recognized as work clothes before the rise of Dude Ranch.
From the suspender button + cinch back that descended from the work pants made in Europe, to the appearance of the more rationally evolved belt loop, denim pants rapidly expanded their market share, but with the [500SW], they dared to use belt loops. It is based on the image of denim pants produced during the transitional period of complete transition.
At that time, preferences were divided into two, and there were quite a few users who cut off the buckle. faithfully reproduced.
Crotch rivets disappeared after the 1930s (the only adopted model in the Fellows denim lineup), although there are various theories such as it was abolished because it damaged the harness, and the wide fitting like early work pants, which was the mainstream at the time. The rugged design derived from the workpiece is incorporated everywhere, such as punched rivets.
Also, the SW at the end means "STARCHED WASH", a wash process unique to Fellowes that uses starch after washing.
Even though it has been wetted once, it maintains a hard texture that is close to rigid, and the crotch area and the back of the knees have a sharp angle, so the beautiful color fading and aging just like vintage is also one of the attractions. It is.
Price: 21,780yen
Size: 28,29,30,31,32,33,34,36 (38,40: 23,980yen)
Material: 100% Cotton
Color: One Wash