This blog post is sponsored by Brooklyn Clothing Co., but opinions are the author’s. Why It’s the Pride of Calgary and Western Canada’s Best Well-Made Menswear Stockist This one hits close to home. You see, it was in Calgary that I spent my formative years. I was just 13 when I moved to the sprawling city where the prairies and the foothills of the Rocky Mountains meet. When I arrived in 1993, Brooklyn Clothing Co. had been open for four years, and they had already established themselves as one of the city’s casual style landmarks. Calgary is best known for hosting the world’s largest rodeo e ..read more

This blog post is sponsored by Tellason. Read about how we run this site here. Why Tellason Ignores Trends and Focuses on Timeless American-Made Workwear Tellason inspires a degree of customer loyalty that few brands can match. What is it about this brand that turns first-time customers into long-time ones? The two founders don’t pump up their base with highly anticipated collections or product drops. Indeed, they do the opposite. They buck trends, forging their identity around core pieces that have been unchanging fixtures in the denim landscape since their release. Tellason founders, Pe ..read more

The Heritage Post has Handed Us the Reins: The Result Is This Special ‘Rebel Outfit’ Issue We’ve long been fans of The Heritage Post. Like so many of the magazine’s readers, we have found the magazine an indispensable sartorial resource. We’ve discovered countless new brands, and we’ve broadened our style horizons with each new issue.  So, to say the very least, we were pleasantly surprised when the Heritage Post team reached out to us and asked us to contribute to a very special issue focusing on rebel style. We met with them to outline the project, and we asked them how many articles th ..read more

The Story of How A Collector’s Dream Come True During Amsterdam Denim Days in October, we were among a few lucky people who crowded into a room at De Hallen to watch the exclusive first-ever screening of Denim Hunter, a film about Swedish denim collector Viktor Fredbäck and his quest to complete his vintage denim collection. Maybe a bit surprisingly, unlike the book that Fredbäck had published in 2015, True Fit, the film teaches us very little about denim. But we get something even better. We get a story arc as old as time: An adventurer sets out in search of a prize. The journey changes him ..read more

This Year, Give the Gift of Essential Clothing and Accessories from Some of Our Favourite Brands On the surface, denimheads might seem tough to shop for. At the same time, though, they are easy to please—provided you start at the right places and with the right principles. We’ve applied the same criteria that we usually apply for our Well-Made Essentials series, and we’ve come up with the following fail-proof list. You’ll find twenty gift suggestions below, including leather jackets, flannels, jeans, boots, socks (of course), and lots more. Some of them will make great stocking stuffers. Other ..read more

Japan’s Most Slept-On Selvedge Brand is Back with Another Extra-Ordinary Pair My first experience with Big John so far exceeded my expectations that it made me question nearly everything I thought I knew about selvedge. Since reviewing the Rare 009s (read my review of those here), they’ve been my go-to back-up pair, and I’ve managed to put a few hundred wear days into them between the competitions.  Big John Rare 009s after around 250 wearsA much earlier version of Big John’s Extra complete with red tab The Rares are Big John’s flagship selvedge product, but they are by no means the be-a ..read more

Go Further Faster: These Selvedge Denim Jeans Will Take You to Denim Heaven in a Hurry Each time we cross the finish line of the Indigo Invitational, I pore over hundreds of submissions from denim faders from all over the world. Last year, I was struck by how many pairs that, after a full year of wear, crossed the line looking nearly brand new. Nearly all of these pairs had something in common. They were heavy. Heavy denim demands a lot from us. It’s hard to break in, and, if we want to fade it fully, we must keep our feet moving. Alex the Blacksmith in 25 oz. Brave StarsTrung Le’s 12.5 oz. Wa ..read more

This blog post is sponsored by Tellason. Read about how we run this site here. Buying Guide to Five Items That Define Tellason Since their early days as garage-based denim entrepreneurs, Tellason founders Pete Searson and Tony Patella have kept things relatively simple. The long history of well-made San Franciscan workwear provides a near-perfect blueprint: Make the product well and make it close to home. The legacy denim brands may have strayed from this, but Tellason is sticking to the script. They make America’s most iconic product in the way (and the place) it used to be made. To intr ..read more

Iron Heart Salutes Swiss Jeans Freak for 50 Years of Collecting with Fade-Friendly Collab In the wide world of denim, there’s nobody like him. Ruedi “Swiss Jeans Freak” Karrer has been a recognizable face in the selvedge scene for as long as it has existed. Indeed, he’s been collecting denim obsessively since before many of us were born, and it all started 50 years ago. In 1973, Ruedi was just a skinny teenager living in a small mountain village in Switzerland. He grew up in a large family that had to make do with very little, so it was a very big deal when a clothing bundle donated by a wealt ..read more

Contributing Indigo Invitational sponsors get in-depth coverage here on Denimhunters. To enquire about sponsorship opportunities, contact us here. An In-Depth Profile of Iron Heart and the People Behind the Iconic Brand and Its Selvedge Jeans Back in 2012, I was still relatively new to the selvedge scene. I’d bought and faded two pairs of raw denim (the first from Nudie, the second from Naked & Famous). As a newcomer, I hadn’t bothered to really research the scene; I just dove in head first and started fading the pairs that were locally available. As far as I knew, I was already wearing th ..read more