Silvae: jacob cohen jeans

Monday June 27, 2011

Jacob Cohen Jeans

Actually, I don’t wear jeans anymore. Not because I am too old for that, no, things ruin every armchair when you carry them at home. Just as the other way around, the Mercedes seats ruined the men’s tailored trousers on the valance. I do not want to mention the Federal Minister, who was sitting in the same desk chair, ruining several trousers and billing the new tailor suits to the taxpayer. As soft as the denim may look, it gets à la longue every armchair small. But even if I no longer wear jeans, I still have a handful of old Levis 501 in my closet, which are a classless classic. Even if one has forgotten that they had not existed for years and that they were raised from the dead only through an advertising campaign. After this yourself Model never sold at all before and was only the hallmark of the gay community of San Francisco. In a time that is shaped by the semiotics of everyday objects, you have to be very careful with the things you wear. But now the 501 is of course on again classic. Because of advertising.

I still have my old 501 from 1957 in my closet, of course I can no longer fit in it. It was still made of the fabric that you had to sit in the hot tub with before wearing it so that your jeans would run in: shrink to fit it said so beautifully in advertising. Afterwards they were taken to the North Sea in summer and stood for hours in the surf, the salt water then bleached the denim so beautifully. I wrote something about this formative experience a year ago under the topic ➱culture change here. Of course, today you don’t need all that anymore, because the jeans in the used look delivered, sandblasted and stonewashed. And Levis had the good old one years ago shrink to fit Brought jeans back to the market, but I kept my hands off.

That everybody in jeans today used look want to have a long time ago destroyed look has brought with it dangers that jeans buyers hardly think of. Unless you have tried to treat your jeans with Domestos in the bathtub and burn your lungs. When the industry uses sodium hypochlorite, it ultimately does nothing else. And since I’ve mentioned the name Domestos before, Domestos jeans seem to be in again recently. Certainly in certain circles. Like neo-Nazis, for example. Unfortunately, skinheads already prefer the Levis 501. And then the next horror: Moonwashed, the latest craze of the GDR from the eighties is said to be on the rise again. If we wait long enough, the pleated jeans will come back. With crease.

The price difference is in the wash, A seller told me when asked why one pair of jeans was twice as expensive as another from the same manufacturer. We can only hope that the company pays exactly this price difference into the life insurance of the workers who deal with the poisons when handling them the ablution and ruin your health with sandblasting the denim fabric. It has been known for a while, but we all seem to have forgotten what Naomi Klein gave us with her book ten years ago No logo wanted to say. And most of the time it takes place in Pakistan and it’s child labor anyway, so we don’t care so much. That brings the Italian manufacturer of luxury jeans a little little in trouble. To their products as made in Italy of course, they cannot have this part of the production done in Pakistan. But maybe they’ll let Italian luxury companies, which are now big in the designer jeans business, do the dirty work of the Chinese, who have already become an economic factor in Italy.

Designer jeans already existed in the eighties when American companies like Jordache and Gloria Vanderbilt came up with the idea of sewing large company logos onto their cheap jeans and selling them at a high price. But the designer jeans of the past few years are something different. Most expensive and best Japanese fabrics and supposedly (so Jacob Cohen) hand-sewn. And hog expensive. My new Jacob Cohen jeans cost € 299. Unfortunately to Michael Rieckhof’s sake, I did not buy it at Kelly’s, but bought it on eBay. For 39 €. The price is OK. A week later the devil rode me and I bought another one. At an Austrian dealer, where no one offers (on eBay there is war between Germany and Austria). For six euros (plus 13.80 postage) it was mine, incredible.

And the tailor around the corner cut it from one day to the next. I just have to mention it because it’s really great. On the one hand, the Yesilyurt couple is extremely nice, and on the other hand, Mr. Yesilyurt is a master with a needle and thread. Years ago I sewed a lining into the front pants of a Savile Row suit without batting an eyelid. Because there are companies in Savile Row who believe that lined pants are something for Italian sissies. If you were exiled to Gordonstoun by your parents as a child, like Prince Philip and Charles, and your ass was frozen in an unheated bedroom, then unlined pants like O.K. his. But I would rather wear lined pants. Mr. Yesilyurt did a great job. It can also excellently shorten the sleeves of shirts. Not only cuts them off at the bottom, but moves the sleeve slit further up with the small button. By the way, this little button is called in English gauntlet button, which I only realized when I found a German text in it as a ➱glove button. The Yesilyurt tailor shop is in Kiel on the corner of Esmarchstrasse and Feldstrasse, opposite Weinhaus ➱Tiemann, where toute la Kiel buys his wine. Also has a parking space in front of the house (Tiemann too, of course).

I have known that the Jacob Cohen brand exists since the 1980s because I subscribed to the Italian one L’Uomo Vogue would have. At that time, they were nothing special, not an object of desire. And not so expensive. Obviously they did one years ago relaunch made and oriented towards the very top. The jeans are then fully paved with labels inside, have silver-plated rivets and buttons. And with any model you get handkerchiefs, sewing thread and a pumice stone for sanding. On the side of the men’s outfitter Braun in Hamburg it says: The highlight is the sewn-on Jacob Cohen label made of real pony fur. But hello, a highlight. What trivialities you overpriced with olabukse can sell! The word olabukse is Norwegian, nice word. I found on the net where someone insured that Jacob Cohen the best olabukse in the world makes. The highlight made of pony skin is of course already off. First, it disassembles after a few washes anyway. Secondly, I don’t want to be asked by Wanda and Carlo: Has a pony been killed for your pants?? But otherwise the jeans are good, even very good. The second (the one for six euros) doesn’t sit so well because it’s a different model with a different cut, but what can you ask for six euros? At Aldi the jeans cost € 9.99 (and someone makes a profit too).

Jacob Cohen are not the only ones bustling up there in the market segment at € 299, there are still True Religion, Seven for all Mankind, PRPS, Adriano Goldschmied and their names. Some are obviously more exclusive than others. Of the 172,806 men’s jeans on ebay, 783 are from True Religion and 551 from Seven for all Mankind, but only two from Jacob Cohen. Adriano Goldschmied is already available from Conleys. If you landed there or appeared in large numbers at YOXX, you are no longer exclusive. What is of course very exclusive is to pay $ 60,000 on ebay for a 155 year old Levis (above). Made an anonymous Japanese in 2005. Hopefully it fits. Otherwise I can help out with the address of a very good tailoring shop (see above!). The Japanese are to blame for everything anyway. A company like Kurabo (founded in 1889) has its old looms for that ring denim never sorted out, that pays off when better qualities are required. Later, the Japanese bought the old looms from the Americans to look after them selvage denim then they made the first really expensive jeans out of it. Such as the company Evisu. Isn’t it a coincidence that evisu is the god of money in Japanese.

Buying a Levis 501 (of course still a Big E) of the best denim quality in Bremen in the 1950s was no problem. We weren’t an American enclave anymore, but the Americans were still there, they liked it port of embarkation Don’t give up Bremerhaven (where Elvis arrived). And there were also enough stores selling army surplus negotiated. Still, blue jeans were not a dominant garment. Can be seen on all photos from this period. And I only had this one Levis 501, no second. However, due to its quality, it lasted astonishingly long. I had chinos, corduroy trousers and flannel trousers to get through life. Jeans were good for sailing, I admit that. But you don’t really need it.

Levis has been noticing this for several years now, which is in a serious crisis. Cheap Japanese companies that fight each other on the Japanese market and throw jeans on the market for € 5.10 are also fighting a futile fight against the Chinese competition. They can undercut this with child labor and production in prisons. There is nothing in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and he who considers price only is that man’s lawful prey. Rushkin is said to have said it (it is not so certain), but Ruskin or not, the sentence remains true. What has happened since sweatshops of the Victorian period and Thomas Hoods Song of the shirt changed? The cartoon up there is from the way Punch of 1845.

When I no longer fit my old 501, an odyssey began for me. Or a grail search for the right jeans. Whenever you found one that fit well, the model no longer existed a little later. The principle of planned obsolescence applies nowhere like on the jeans market. It only takes years to show how good jeans are. Have you ever noticed that when men talk about jeans, they always use the past tense? In sentences like: The pepe I had then was good. The overpriced designer jeans (and all the other brands that became famous for being worn by Brad Pitt last week) are of course not a real economic factor. Maybe they’re just the twilight of the gods in the jeans industry crisis. I naturally contributed to the crisis. Because I’ve only been buying my jeans in a second-hand shop for years.

And finally, I have another music tip: the Turkish rock band bANDISTA, which fights loudly and vigorously against the conditions under which jeans are made in Turkey, has its next appearance on June 30 in Hanover.

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Monday June 27, 2011

Jacob Cohen Jeans

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