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Incredible embroidered shorts from the 1975 book American Denim.

I always think that's Cindy Sherman at the top.

also:

8 Time Champion

Old stock Champion t-shirts from a thrift shop.
I think the little stapled card tags dates them to the mid-70's.


Related: old stock iron-on letters from the Ft. Lauderdale flea market last month.
Eight "If dogs run free, why not we?" t-shirts? why not?!

My Karma Ran Over My Dogma

Some favorites from the collection.

this old thing

Recent yard/estate sale acquisitions of the clothing variety:

Top: Vintage Patagonia Gore-Tex raincoat, with a Patagonia decal where the front patch usually is.

David Hicks wallet, of the softest kid glove leather ever, with a tiny leather address book. Never used, from Japan in the 70's.

Vintage New York Times t-shirt- almost as soft as the wallet- promoting their classifieds section.

1940's Hermes silk scarf featuring a pack of antsy hunting hounds chomping at the bits.

The ubiquitous L.L.Bean hunting boots, this time with leather kilties- that fringed tongue, and a 1976 Maine Road Atlas which has little dots showing every farm in the state. Kind of fun if you're out in the country and you want to show the kids some cows and goats. Also good if you go out and forget the GPS.


related: Mainer and founder of Patagonia Yvon Chouinard on finding his own way and building a successful and responsible business here, from a talk he gave at University of California Santa Barbara in 2005. It's an hour long, and well worth watching.

Take R.I.T

Selections from Rochester Institute of Technology yearbooks, 1974, 76, and 78.

(in no particular order)

So You're a Man

Vintage terrycloth Stubbies from a modern Kiwi man's estate sale last weekend. Never worn- perhaps as a result of trying on...

L&P ad from the ever brilliant Jemaine Clement.

Vêtements 1970

Pauline Denyer and Paul Smith

On 9 October 1970, armed with £600 savings, Paul Smith opened his very first shop. Called Vêtement (the French word for clothing) and located a 6 Byard Lane, down a tiny back alley in the centre of Nottingham. The weekly rent was just 50p.

The 12-foot square room that is featured in the exhibition gives an idea of the size of the premises (compact to say the least) and various artefacts- the original till with the first day's takings, Pauline's diary, and a selection of photographs- build up an impression of the place. The bottle of Eau Sauvage eau de toilet in the glass cabinet is a little more obscure: this was to disguise the smell of Paul's Afghan hound Homer, which tended to overpower the windowless room.

Vêtement was originally open only on Fridays and Saturdays; Smith having to work during the week selling fabrics, making up suits for wholesalers and window dressing, and later as a stylist and consultant, to bring in some more steady money. But soon the shop was buzzing. It was the only outlet outside London which stocked Margaret Howell and Kenzo, and after a while, slowly but surely, Pauline and Paul began introducing their own designs on the racks.

From Paul Smith: True Brit (1998) an exhibit in Tokyo, Kobe, and Fukuoka, winter 1998.

Fear and L.L.oathing

Vintage 70's L.L. Bean crazy-patchwork "Rainbow Lake" jacket, of the Hunter S. Thompson school of Gonzo jacketry, made up of every scrap of corduroy and twill in Freeport. I believe Raoul Duke's (as played by Johnny Depp, above) was actually an Abercrombie & Fitch, but the Bean version was a little crazier, and came with a belt/gonzo headband. From a yard sale last spring, it didn't fit either one of us but it was obviously too cool to pass up. But after languishing in a closet (with other "things-that-hopefully-might-fit-when-I'm-a-wizened-95-year-old") it was time to think we'll probably find another one by then and let this one go-along with my future William Holden looks, below.

So we put them all on ebay last month for some crazy bidding as the patchwork jacket went for $610 and the old Abercrombie and Bean safari jackets went for 200 each.

Rainbow Lake old friend: I will see your amazing technicolor dreampatches another time, another place, and in a bigger size. 'Til we meet again!

Old School Pre School

Prefontaine School.

Not to be left out of the shoe department, our son Fletcher has these tiny vintage Nike sneakers waiting for him as soon as he can run around, or walk- or really- fit schmit- I guess we could put them on him now. The red pair (marked 1982) is from a yard sale in Maine a few years ago (forward-thinking), and the blue pair (1983) was found by our friends on top of a garbage can in Brooklyn.

Laptop for scale/son reference.

Mardens, Home of the Has Beens

From the newly opened Mardens Offprice in Scarborough Maine. Which already looks 30 years old, since they only maybe broom-cleaned the ancient Walmart they moved into. Mardens is an offprice last stop for anything from 1970's Eastern European mattresses to 1980's Brazilian cologne to recently expired pallets of Frankenberry cereal. Those obviously would be enough to make Mardens a somewhat regular stop, but occasionally they'll have the most ridiculously wonderful stuff, unfortunately usually due to some tragic mishap, like a fire or a flood, or maybe a bankruptcy, or some sort of expiration. Really it's a mystery where this stuff comes from, and how it's always at least 75% off a normal price.

John and Fletcher and I stopped by to check it out on Sunday, which was one of those ridiculously wonderful days:

Silver Hunter Boots, two pairs of the fantastic Swedish Hasbeens clogs- one black and one one strappy orange, and a pair of Dsquared rainbow-striped sneakers.

Above: How I felt leaving the Mardens parking lot! (photo from the Hasbeens website)

Below: John didn't fare too shabbily either, with a pair of Red Wing boots (made in USA) and some Clarks Wallabees

We even went to the Mardens up in Lewiston today in search of the same magic, but no such luck as at the new dreamy Scarborough one. If you're in town it definitely may be worth a trip.
Photo of Mardens below taken by John (ostensibly to tie in to the previous post.)

From the Ritva Man

Out of the blue the other day came a great, unexpected phone call from Mike Ross, expatriate Portlander and the creator of the Ritva Man sweaters. We wrote a little about the Ritva Man back in December but Mike was happy to elaborate and talk about the (truly humble) beginnings, from his wife Ritva's first dresses she made by altering a crochet bedspread pattern from a Swedish craft book, to his Ritva Man's first "Homerun" baseball-jersey sweaters made by sewing a different color long sleeve to a short sleeve.

It's amazing what they accomplished in the first couple years.

Top: the first Ritva Man Homerun sweater, circa 1969, now in the permanent collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum. In 1969 Mike Ross designed a sweater called the ‘Homerun’, inspired by a traditional baseball under-garment. From this prototype, in two colours with a simple embroidered flower, there followed around 2500 original variations, with stripes, in unique colourways. Ross later produced the ‘Artist Collections’, a series of ‘wearable works of art’, with appliquéd designs by artist friends including David Hockney, Allen Jones, and Patrick Caulfield.

Above: The Homerun sweaters on Mike Ross & teammates, including Allen Jones, Commander Whitehead, and the Hathaway Man, I think. An unused London Sunday Times photo, 1970.

Above: Julie Christie modeling the Ritva Man Allen Jones sweater (top) and Liz Frink sweater, to coincide with McCabe & Mrs. Miller promotions, from the London Observer, Nov. 1971. The headline reads" At last, off the peg sweaters for 40 pounds". Which wasn't actually cheap as chips. Mike joked (but seriously) one of the reasons the labels were so intense was to make the sweaters seem more important, like a work of art, each hand made and very involved, with all their provenence (I'm paraphrasing). Funny that he would worry, but it's exactly what an artist would do. Indeed, if you were lucky enough to buy one back then today you could sell it to the V&A.

Above, the Ritva Man David Hockney sweater on display at the Sheffield Museum.

Images courtesy of Mike Ross.

To the Max

Three Peter Max things in our apartment. Above is an old screenprint exhibition poster which was hanging in my brother's room throughout the 70's, then stored away in my grandmother's attic after 1984. For "safe keeping", since my brother has a penchant to sell things, I gave it to Linda and myself as a wedding present from him.

Peter Max-design Wrangler corduroys from probably the same year. Linda found these for a couple dollars in a now-defunct Brooklyn thrift shop. They're made for probably a 10 or 11 year-old, so we'll see what happens when our son gets to be that age. I know when I was ten I would have loved them, but they may be relegated to a Halloween as Greg Brady.

Thirdly is 1969's Peter Max designed "Teen Cuisine, a Beginner's Guide to French Cooking", from a sidewalk vendor in Park Slope. I'm sure the recipes are fine but what's really awesome are Max's saturated, full-bleed gradient silk screened pages. They're not all printed this way, but when they're not, and it's a white page, the type is silkscreened in gradient. Wow.

Boat Basins and Swap Meets

Sun-bleached lobster claw, sun-bleached old Cape Cod t-shirt, typewriter case stuffed with paints, and more old LL Bean bags.