ON & BEYOND

Steeziest fella at the show.

The awesome folks at Baldwin. (Below: Matt Baldwin)

SNS Herning

McNairy

One of the pleasures of my not so recent, but still relevant trip to Japan, is meeting the folks at NEXUSVII®. I got a peek at their upcoming offerings from head designer Tomohiro and his right-hand man Tsuyoshi who was also my Shibuya tour guide!

The goods are now available!!!

One of my favorite pickups from Japan are definitely these cotton duck pants by HPP. While the 14oz of thick linen canvas was very rigid, after about 3 weeks of wear they’ve comfortably molded to my legs.

When it comes to ballcaps the dipset in me still holds the flat brim at heart, but there’s an undeniable charm to these vintage shorter brimmed fitteds that are making a resurgence in the hat-o-sphere. Ebbets, a research driven company, have been the front runner of the vintage-inspired caps for…well, 20 years now. And they’ve yet to taste the effects of this renaissance. This Negro League, Brooklyn Eagles cap was purchased on my last trip to Japan. Concurrently and not to be outdone, Baldwin Denim have made their own vintage-inspired Kansas City cap to rep their home-team.

Just got these Iron Heart IH-9634 a few days ago from Giles at www.ironheart.co.uk and I’ve been wearing them non-stop ever since. Based in Tokyo, Iron Heart’s goal is to “create clothing in classic, timeless styles that are constructed out of the finest materials to the highest standards”. Haraki-san and co. aren’t joking: be it heavy-duty jeans and denim jackets or super thick flannel and chambray button up shirts, Iron Heart’s materials, quality and workmanship are truly second to none.

These burly jeans feature IH’s signature straight cut, which is undoubtedly the best cut I have owned: flattering yet a tad relaxed. This deadstock model sports a few slight differences from Iron Heart’s current superblack denim offering, the IH-9634Z: it features a button-fly rather than a zipper and a post loom finishing process which makes the denim stiffer than the modern version.

The super heavy 21oz black denim, while not destined to fade, is bound to age beautifully with wear. I’m definitely looking forward to braving the cold Quebec winter armed with my trusty black armor pants!

I got a nice package today from my friends at 3sixteen! Boxed up was a pair of their latest denim offering. 3sixteen+ is the NY brand’s japanese selvedge project in coalition with Self Edge. Big ups to johan and andrew.

“The 10BSP jean from 3sixteen+ is a great straight leg fit jean made up of a rope dyed indigo selvedge denim which is woven in Japan.

The denim on these jeans start out as a deep indigo color with a considerable amount of vertical falling that’s visible even when the denim is raw. Due to the rigid feel of this denim the jean’s color will fade to a bright indigo shade over parts of heavy stress or abrasion with normal wear.

—

Taking the Japanese ideology of leaving no detail untouched these two entities have come together to create a line which brings the Japanese otaku of denim and classic American styles to the western world. 3sixteen+ are working closely with small Japanese mills to create new denim and fabrics for these projects.”

Available exclusively at SelfEdge

* 14oz Indigo Roped Dyed Japanese Selvedge Denim
* Dual-Red Selvedge ID
* Custom Gunmetal Shanks & Rivets
* Selvedge Coin Pocket, Fly, & Outseam
* Hidden Rivets
* Hand-stamped Heavyweight Leather Patch
* Offset Coin Pocket Stitching Detail
* Straight Leg Fit

One of my highlights of the weekend in NY was my photoshoot for 3sixteen. It wasn’t only the classic aesthetic theme that attracted me, but I was also genuinely excited to work with the brand I’ve been following since day one. The shoot took place in Tribeca, late at night when the streets were nearly deserted, which gave us the desolate 50′s New York feeling we wanted for the lookbook. Without fully revealing our work, here are a few appetizers.

A huge thank you to owner Andrew Chen and his intern Kyle, our stylist and assitant editor at Antenna Sarah Kim, our models Jeb and David, and last but not least Maura our versatile photo assistant.

Here are some shots I did of Dana Lee’s FW10 leather duffle for Selectism. Much thanks to Jason Dike for the kind words…

“There’s been a few bumps along the way, but here’s the second installment of our guest blogger series. Picking guest bloggers isn’t easy, but choosing On And Beyond was as big a no-brainer as no-brainers get. Of course when we first chose him, he was still relatively under the radar; since then he’s been shouted out by GQ and started working with Nike. We’re just glad he replied to our emails.

Given On and Beyond’s photography, we thought it made sense to get him to showcase a stand out piece from one of our favourite designers, Dana Lee. We picked the shearling lined leather duffle coat from her autumn/winter 2010 collection, because it deserved a closer look. The rest is up to Vincent.”