Hardwear Highlight: Selvedge Jean
With tradeshows on hold, Carved in Blue is putting its capsule collection out one digital post at a time.
This week, we’re highlighting the Carved in Blue® Selvedge Jean.
The birth of the jean is a well-documented story, which started with a tailor who had an idea to strengthen his clients’ garments at their pocket edges. These clients being miners who went down silver mines. Many don’t realize early miners were just wearing basic tailored trousers and pants down the silver mines in California in the 1870s period. Most of these garments were not even that heavy in weight compared to modern workwear of today. 8 or 10 oz was the maximum weight that was produced, a shirting weight we would consider today. It’s for this very reason not many early examples remain.
During this period of time, many tailors and dry good shops popped up in these towns servicing these miners, selling everything from equipment to clothing for the miners. Early workwear has its roots in tailoring, as it was tailors who made garments for the miners.
Jacob Davis was a tailor who came up with the idea of riveting overalls at their stress points, and history was made when Levi Strauss helped pay for the patent.
May 20, 1873 is the patent date for the rivet, but riveted jeans were in circulation many months or even a year before the patent came into effect. The first jeans were made of natural duck canvas, not indigo twilled fabric in this period.
The shape of the back pocket of the 1873 pant is the shape of the spade tool the miners worked with, and the small coin pocket was called a Match Pocket, for the miner’s matches. This jean is heavily tailored, with a shaped curved waistband and mini SPI’s (stitch per inches) – up to 16 and even 18 in some places. Modern garments are now made with 6 or 9 as standard. This jean had only one back pocket, the yoke doesn’t exist yet, but a cinch buckle helped with the fit. The knee area has extra fabric on the knee section for extra protection for the miner. It is important to know that these garments were overalls, and were not meant to be made to fit well; they were meant to be worn loose. Most believe the match pocket was most likely a Jacob Davis invention.
There is a sense of pure refinement of this early style from the shape of the fly, to areas where the seams are run and felled with a single needle method – with one row of stitching on the presentation side, and two rows of stitching on the underside. This jean was made in a time before mass production, before even a chainstitch stitch was even considered. Chainstitch is mostly used on areas where the seams need to flex. You normally find it on back rise stitches, waistbands and side seams. This early garment would also have been made with 100% cotton thread, making it more vulnerable to coming apart and wearing away faster.
Levis had exclusivity of riveting jeans for a short period of time in history, so other workwear and denim brands had to came up with other ingenious methods to strengthen their own garments in points of stress. This early period in denim history is far more fascinating, as so many brands were being creative on their construction methods before everything was standardized after WWI.
For the Carved in Blue® hardware collection, the ENDRIME® team got their main inspiration from a number of early denim garments – with inspiration from the 1870s to 1920s period. Some inspiration with regards to the wash came from a Vintage 501 repro acquired in Bangkok during an inspiration trip.
We were very lucky that Candiani Mill based in Italy agreed to supply their 2019 ITMA Sustainable Innovation award-winning fabric, which is a 50/50 blend of TENCEL ™ x REFIBRA ™ Lyocell and recycled cotton that was used for this garment. Not only is this one of the most sustainable fabrics ever produced to date, it was also produced on a vintage narrow width Selvedge Loom. This was the only fabric we considered for this style.
Key details in our Carved in Blue® Selvedge Jean were:
- Branded ‘Carved in Blue®’ buttons
- Peak-a-boo selvedge coin pocket
- Selvedge construction pocket bearer
- Branded ‘Carved in Blue®’ washer and burr rivets
- Tailored belts loops (which go into bottom waistband)
- Modern slim fit inspiration
- Clean finished Run and Felled double needle chainstitch seams construction inseam
- Hem finished with Union Special 43200G single needle chainstitch
- Branded ‘Carved in Blue®’ collaboration woven label
- Chain stitch waistband construction
- One piece selvedge continuous fly construction
- Printed pocket bag with hand stamped denim mills to identify each garment with TENCEL™ story.
- Leather backed buttons and rivets
- Premium 3/16” selvedge side seam stitching with chainstitch
- Selvedge cinch buckle
- Curved back pocket with concealed rivets
- Period correct mis-stitching on all pockets
- Clean finished Run and Felled double needle chainstitch seams construction backrise and yoke
- Branded ‘Carved in Blue®’ collaboration leather patch
- Added extra strength pocketing reinforcement on back pockets
The Jeanologia team washed the garment based both ENDRIME® and Jeanologia Archive. This garment got a EIM low impact score of 20.
Check out our Selvedge Jean section on Issuu.