Wrangler is Better than Levi's

[dieworkwear]

projectile loom vs shuttle loom is inconsequential. ring spun vs o/e is a more way meaningful comparison and yet doesn't capture the essential product!

xx fabric is still very available, you can size to taste.

I don't think it's inconsequential. But you asked for the differences, and I mentioned the differences in fabric and fabrication. It's not even the same cut. It's a completely different silhouette.

This is the LVC 1955 501

This is the modern 501

 

[double00]

one is raw and one is washed. mainline levi's offers stf, you can walk into kohl's and find them.

i like black flags. i like hidden rivets. these are trivial fashion details in the face of the essential product.

 

[dieworkwear]

one is raw and one is washed. mainline levi's offers stf, you can walk into kohl's and find them.

i like black flags. i like hidden rivets. these are trivial fashion details in the face of the essential product.

The only difference you see in those photos is the wash?

 

[double00]

stf fabric changes with the wash bud (stf = shrink to fit)

interestingly, the vast majority of the shrink happens along the grain but it still implicates ease!

 

[dieworkwear]

stf fabric changes with the wash bud (stf = shrink to fit)

STF isn't going to result in that 1955 shape.

Anyway, if you believe this, then post some eBay listings selling LVC 1955 501s and then ship them mainline Levis 501s or STFs. I'm sure it will go over well.

 

[JFWR]

This is true of 99% of menswear, including things on the CM side of the board. Nearly all of menswear derives from work, sport, and war. The Norwegian split toe was originally a work shoe worn by British railway engineers, and yet people here pay thousands of dollars for them. Peacoats and chinos were military garments. The penny loafer has its roots in fishing shoes.

If I am not mistaken, peacoats were worn by officers in the military. Given the class structure of 19th century militaries (and 20th century ones), I'd say that the peacoat might have had aristocratic aspirations to begin with. Nevertheless, "military" is not equivalent to "people working in ditches". That is the point I was making, in so much as buying nice jeans sounds, at least to some ears, as "buying nice rags". I am not saying that nice jeans look bad, or that they aren't wise investments, but this is part of the reason people will find it odd to talk about nice jeans.

The chino as desert khakis definitely has military roots, though, and that included lower class enlisted men, so I'll grant that wasn't aristocratic to begin with, but it was still not associated with ditches and farm work and such.

But yeah, Norwegian split toes were originally a working shoe owing to water resistance. They are still meant to be a more casual shoe than, say, an oxford or an opera pump. Wouldn't suspect that if you saw the Dover, though, no.

Penny loafers were based on the mocassin if I am not mistaken in general shape, but were made for an upper middle class audience.

The tuxedo, the business suit, the waist coat, the oxford, the balmoral boot, the chelsea boot, the opera pump, etc are off hand not associated with the working class or military class.

 

[dieworkwear]

If I am not mistaken, peacoats were worn by officers in the military. Given the class structure of 19th century militaries (and 20th century ones), I'd say that the peacoat might have had aristocratic aspirations to begin with. Nevertheless, "military" is not equivalent to "people working in ditches". That is the point I was making, in so much as buying nice jeans sounds, at least to some ears, as "buying nice rags". I am not saying that nice jeans look bad, or that they aren't wise investments, but this is part of the reason people will find it odd to talk about nice jeans.

The chino as desert khakis definitely has military roots, though, and that included lower class enlisted men, so I'll grant that wasn't aristocratic to begin with, but it was still not associated with ditches and farm work and such.

But yeah, Norwegian split toes were originally a working shoe owing to water resistance. They are still meant to be a more casual shoe than, say, an oxford or an opera pump. Wouldn't suspect that if you saw the Dover, though, no.

Penny loafers were based on the mocassin if I am not mistaken in general shape, but were made for an upper middle class audience.

The tuxedo, the business suit, the waist coat, the oxford, the balmoral boot, the chelsea boot, the opera pump, etc are off hand not associated with the working class or military class.

I think you should read more about the history of the suit. The suit was originally a working class garment.

 

[double00]

STF isn't going to result in that 1955 shape.

Anyway, if you believe this, then post some eBay listings selling LVC 1955 501s and then ship them mainline Levis 501s or STFs. I'm sure it will go over well.

i don't sell lvc, i just sell vintage levi's homie

 

[JFWR]

I think you should read more about the history of the suit. The suit was originally a working class garment.

Beau Brummell created the modern men's suit, a prominent and dandy who just didn't like the foppish, garish looks of the 18th century. https://hespokestyle.com/beau-brummell-fashion/ He even, like many of the e-gents of today, lived wildly beyond his means.

So no, as a point of fact, the suit seems to have no working class roots. It has roots in a dandy who wasn't quite rich enough to pull off 18th century ornate fashion.

 

[dieworkwear]

Beau Brummell created the modern men's suit, a prominent and dandy who just didn't like the foppish, garish looks of the 18th century. https://hespokestyle.com/beau-brummell-fashion/ He even, like many of the e-gents of today, lived wildly beyond his means.

So no, as a point of fact, the suit seems to have no working class roots. It has roots in a dandy who wasn't quite rich enough to pull off 18th century ornate fashion.

Read books about the suit. Not "He Spoke Style"

Chris Breward wrote a good book on the subject titled The Suit.

 

[JFWR]

Read books about the suit. Not "He Spoke Style"

Chris Breward wrote a good book on the subject titled The Suit.

Beau Brummell | English Fashion Icon, Regency Era Style

Beau Brummell was an English dandy, famous for his friendship with George, Prince of Wales (regent from 1811 and afterward King George IV). Brummell was deemed the leader of fashion at the beginning of the 19th century. Brummell’s grandfather was a shopkeeper in the parish of St. James, London, who

www.britannica.com

A Revolution in Masculine Style: How Beau Brummell Changed Jane Austen’s World » JASNA

jasna.org

George ‘‘Beau’’ Brummell: The Originator of Dandyism

Often misinterpreted as a ‘fop’, Beau Brummell was in fact an innovative dresser and arbiter of good taste who laid the foundations for tailoring as we know it today.

therake.com

Beau Brummell: The First Menswear Influencer?

Beau Brummell is often regarded as the father of modern menswear. What's more, he could be seen as the influencer of his day! Here's our take.

www.gentlemansgazette.com

Beau Brummell was a 19th-century fashion icon for men

Sharp-dressed man Beau Brummell was the sole arbiter of male fashion and invented style rules that men still follow today.

www.nationalgeographic.com

- Hugo Jacomet concedes, much to his chagrin as a Frenchman, that the English created modern men's style through Beau Brumell.

I'm not dismissing that your source may say otherwise, but you can find the idea that Beau Brumell created what amounts to as the prototype of the men's suit in many different publications. This seems to more or less be a historically attested fact.

I am not saying that working class people did not wear suits, I am saying its origin is not in the working class. The men's dress shirt, meanwhile, has been around for hundreds of years as just basically the standard, men's shirt, now refined to be buttoned down, attached collar and cuffs, made of finer material, etc. The shirts that one sees in pirate movies, for instance, are the direct ancestors of the men's dress shrit.

I suppose you could say "well, pants existed prior to the suit, and jackets existed prior to the suit, and ties come from Croatian mercenaries", but the idea of the suit itself is more or less the result of Beau Brumell deciding "okay, so I can't afford ornate ****, but how do I look elegant and get the king to think this is better, too?"

 

[double00]

pantaloons prefigured jawnz

 

[radicaldog]

No, @JFWR. Crudely, Brummell was to a large extent responsible for "the great renunciation" in menswear: simple, unadorned clothes with a focus on fit and material, rather than the lavish fabrics and cuts worn by the upper classes up until that point. Yes, this development is part of what made it possible for the suit--originally a practical garment almost comparable to today's tracksuits or workwear ensembles--to become acceptable professional/city wear. But note that Brummell's distinctive "uniform" consisted of separates: navy coat, sand trousers, black boots. So Brummell was at most a necessary but hardly a sufficient condition for the development of modern CM. For a long time city formalwear was mainly separates (frock coats, various kinds of tailcoats, then strollers, etc.). What we now call a suit ("lounge suit") was a more informal type of dress which gradually became acceptable for more formal occasions. As recently as 1981 the POTUS wore a stroller to his inauguration.

Like DWW says, it is unwise to get your fashion history from websites that are basically marketing platforms, and so more often than not echo chambers in which people mostly speak with no concern for the truth.

But also, have a look at DWW's eponymous blog. He is one of the most knowledgeable regular posters on here these days. You're just not going to win this one.

 

[dieworkwear]

Beau Brummell | English Fashion Icon, Regency Era Style

Beau Brummell was an English dandy, famous for his friendship with George, Prince of Wales (regent from 1811 and afterward King George IV). Brummell was deemed the leader of fashion at the beginning of the 19th century. Brummell’s grandfather was a shopkeeper in the parish of St. James, London, who

www.britannica.com

A Revolution in Masculine Style: How Beau Brummell Changed Jane Austen’s World » JASNA

jasna.org

George ‘‘Beau’’ Brummell: The Originator of Dandyism

Often misinterpreted as a ‘fop’, Beau Brummell was in fact an innovative dresser and arbiter of good taste who laid the foundations for tailoring as we know it today.

therake.com

Beau Brummell: The First Menswear Influencer?

Beau Brummell is often regarded as the father of modern menswear. What's more, he could be seen as the influencer of his day! Here's our take.

www.gentlemansgazette.com

Beau Brummell was a 19th-century fashion icon for men

Sharp-dressed man Beau Brummell was the sole arbiter of male fashion and invented style rules that men still follow today.

www.nationalgeographic.com

- Hugo Jacomet concedes, much to his chagrin as a Frenchman, that the English created modern men's style through Beau Brumell.

I'm not dismissing that your source may say otherwise, but you can find the idea that Beau Brumell created what amounts to as the prototype of the men's suit in many different publications. This seems to more or less be a historically attested fact.

I am not saying that working class people did not wear suits, I am saying its origin is not in the working class. The men's dress shirt, meanwhile, has been around for hundreds of years as just basically the standard, men's shirt, now refined to be buttoned down, attached collar and cuffs, made of finer material, etc. The shirts that one sees in pirate movies, for instance, are the direct ancestors of the men's dress shrit.

I suppose you could say "well, pants existed prior to the suit, and jackets existed prior to the suit, and ties come from Croatian mercenaries", but the idea of the suit itself is more or less the result of Beau Brumell deciding "okay, so I can't afford ornate ****, but how do I look elegant and get the king to think this is better, too?"

As radicaldog posted above, you've misinterpreted this history. Beau Brummel didn't invent the suit. He's widely credited with having started "The Great Male Renunciation." After him, dress started becoming more austere and simplified, as evidenced by how fops dressed pre-Brummell.

But this story isn't even true. Anyone who's read a bit of social history knows that they should be suspicious of stories that are too neat and simplified. British dress became austere largely because of developments in liberalism and European politics. As democracy developed in Britain, the ruling class wasn't able to festoon themselves in crazy silks, gold, and other kinds of fanciful attire. Cartoons at the time were drawn mocking them (made for the illiterate class). Before this, kings and queens dressed in an otherworldly fashion to justify their place on the throne. As people started questioning this hierarchy, the ruling class had to dress in more austere ways to not get beheaded. You see this with the history of the beheading of Charles I and, later, the trial of George IV. As democracy developed in Britain, the ruling class had to be more modest in their dress to signal puritan values. And since many people ape the dress habits of the upper classes, others followed.

In the mid-19th century, proper gentlemen wore frock coats and continued to do so up until the early 20th century.

Here's how Prince Albert dressed in 1854

This is how the ruling class dressed at the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.

The frock coat was not the suit. The frock coat was for aristocrats and proper gentlemen. The suit was for the working class.

Keir Hardie, founder of the Labour Party, raised a stink when he wore a suit and a deerstalking cap on his first day as an MP.

MPs at the time wore frock coats, silk top hats, and firmly starched collar. Kier wore a suit to signal his allegiance to the working class in London. The British press was so scandalized by it at the time that they wrote, “a cloth cap in Parliament!”

At the turn of the 20th century, the suit was worn by clerks, shop keepers, and administrators. The frock coat was worn by politicians, financiers, and people of "respectable" professions, such as doctors and lawyers. If you went to a "respectable" place such as church, you were expected to dress in something more formal. Samuel Pearson wrote of the suit in 1882:

"The working classes of England are far behind those of France in the matter of dress. In Normandy you meet with the neat, white, well starched cap; in Lancashire with a tawdry shawl ... The men are worse. They never seem to change their working clothes when the days work is over. Those who go to chapel and church have a black or dark suit for Sunday wear, generally creased and often ill-fitting, but on other days it is seldom that you meet with a nicely dressed working man or working woman."

H. Dennis Bradley, a Bond Street tailor, wrote of the suit in 1912, lamenting the sliding dress norms among the lower classes. This was around the time the suit became increasingly popular.

"Surely, it is not logical to imagine that the present century, which in general progress promises to make the greatest strides in the history of the world, will be content to continue the negative fashions and the drab and dreary colours which are the legacy of a century admittedly decadent in the art of dress. The fashions of the men of the eighteenth century were, from an artistic point of view, almost perfect. Why did they decay during the nineteenth century to a degree of hideousness which was a positive offence to the eye -- to a retrograde ugliness without parallel in any era?"

Can go on for many more quotes. But suffice to say, at the turn of the 20th century, the suit wasn't considered upper class. In fact, the upper classes lamented the rise of the suit.

 

[FlyingMonkey]

one is raw and one is washed. mainline levi's offers stf, you can walk into kohl's and find them.

i like black flags. i like hidden rivets. these are trivial fashion details in the face of the essential product.

I don't know if you're being purposefully stupid, but stupid is how it comes across. And every time you post, you're just making it worse.