Crafting Denim: 2023 Curatorial Fellowship

Curatorial Fellowship 2023

Crafting Denim

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curated by Sonya Abrego

Curatorial Fellowship 2023 / Sonya abrego

Curatorial Fellowship 2023 / Sonya abrego

Crafting Denim

curated by Sonya Abrego / NEW YORK, NY

Curatorial Fellowship 2023 / Curatorial Statement

Table of Contents

07.................. Curatorial Statement

by Sonya Abrego 12....................... Interviews with the Makers of Crafting Denim

Curatorial Statement

By Sonya Abrego

24................... Exhibition Checklist 26..................... Acknowledgements

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2023 Curatorial Fellow

Crafting Denim responds to a central question: how have jeans, a consumer product born of nineteenth-century industrial modernity, come to share so much in common with studio craft in the twenty-first century?

Jeans are a relic of nineteenthcentury industry. The fact that they are now ubiquitous – part of casual wardrobes and fashionable looks – obscures a singularly strange and unlikely legacy. Historic artifacts that have merged seamlessly into the everyday, jeans, like history, inspire questioning, revaluation, and creativity.

The origins of denim and jeans are more closely related to the histories of industrial design than of craft or fashion. The invention of the five-pocket jean

by Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis in 1873 solved a design problem presented by the physically demanding nature of mining.

They added industrially produced metal rivets to reinforce pockets on garments stitched with sturdy

All photos are by Benjamin James

cover: courtesy of Bowery Blue Makers.

Roberts unless otherwise noted.

left: W.H Ranch Dungarees, “1942 Freedom Ryder,” 2017.

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Curatorial Statement

Above: Bowery Blue Makers, “Takayuki Echigoya’s tools.

Hand-stamped copper rivet with metal stamp, donut buttons, cutting tool, buckle-back strap,” vintage and current.

iron sewing machines. The denim yardage, rope-dyed with indigo, was woven on shuttle looms, and manufacturing technologies updated over generations allowed for efficient massproduction. Jeans were an early example of what was a new and rapidly accelerating readymade clothing industry. They were made by and for industrial workers; factory laborers followed the conventions of assembly- line manufacture, and workwear was not afforded much consideration in terms of stylish detail or current fashion.

Clothing manufacture developed apace with automation and the hand skills that were initially required to create jeans– the cutting, stitching, and finishing that left subtle imperfections in the garment – became less and less evident. This history is in many ways antithetical to craft.

However, in small workshops across the country today makers are creating jeans by hand, start to finish, incorporating raw specialty denims (woven on shuttle looms that are obsolete in contemporary garment factories) and stitched with antiquated sewing and finishing machines.

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Takayuki Echigoya of Bowery Blue Makers (Brooklyn, NY), Ryan Martin of W.H. Ranch Dungarees (Kansas City, KS) and Sarah Yarborough and Victor Lytvinenko of Raleigh Denim (Raleigh, NC) are contemporary makers who approach jeans like craftspeople.

Bowery Blue Makers blends Japanese and American influences; W.H. Ranch Dungarees has a strong regional inflection, with its origins in Kansas, the birthplace of Lee jeans; and Raleigh Denim is a young brand that incorporates the knowledge and skill set of sewers and pattern makers who worked in an industry that once employed a large percentage of the community. Each company is unique in its location, style, and inspiration – but all share a deep appreciation for materials, tools, and history. All aspire to create a product built to last for a consumer who appreciates attention to detail and the subtle distinctions found only in the handmade.

Crafting Denim brings a number of contradictions to light. Each maker offers a distinct, and in some cases custom or bespoke, version of something that was once mass-produced. Materials that were standard for cheap workwear from the late-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries are specialty items today, used to create an exclusive product. Artisans making jeans honor the past by incorporating these materials and maintaining the tools needed to work with them, but the context for this making, and the consumer who values it, is a product of the present. It represents a niche in the marketplace interested in small-batch handmade goods, connected to specific stories. Personalization is central to the work and the appeal of the product. Members of the Raleigh Denim workshop even sign completed garments, like a work of art, forging an individual connection between maker and wearer.

While the jeans adhere to tradition through design, small-scale fabrication is a departure from denim’s roots as standard-issue workwear. Ryan Martin notes that the idea of custom-made jeans was more challenging to explain at first, even to those who may 9

Curatorial Fellowship 2023 /

Curatorial Statement

already own handmade boots or hats, items that have a history of artisanal fabrication. In addition, garment factory workers were historically anonymous, and mostly women. In today’s workshops the maker is recognized and sought for their skill; and this is also an area where makers and wearers are mostly men. Sarah Yarborough has found this to be both challenging and refreshing. While she has fought to be heard in some spaces, her input provides new insight in others.

artisanal jeans presents an intervention in this binary: by taking a craftsman-like approach to an industrial garment, these makers blur distinctions between the two. Jeans provide a familiar point of access to investigate these concepts, and they invite us to consider sustainability, history, and alternative contexts for making.

While each maker brings their own interpretation to the work, the designs share the fundamental elements of the five-pocket jean. Greater personalization, or what can be seen as an additional degree of customization, is achieved through wear. For Yarborough, wearing is part of the craft. Nuanced detail combined with traces of change over time are valued over novelty and offer opportunities for engagement. According to Echigoya, the wearer contributes to the uniqueness of the product: “The very manner in which something ages is a marker of individuality. It’s very precious. For me as a maker, it’s fascinating to see the varying ways in which the same raw denim can change over time.” The manner in which raw (unwashed or treated) denim fades is integral to its appeal.

Customers who seek – and pay – a premium for handcrafted jeans are investing in something meant to be worn for a long time. This investment in the aging process, along with the satisfaction it brings, also exemplifies sustainability. While they may not be deliberately positioning their work in contrast to fast-fashion, these makers offer an alternative to the accelerated fashion cycle’s emphasis on newness and disposability.

Crafting Denim explores the contradictions and convergences between craft and industry and offers insight into a unique niche of fabrication. In his book The Invention of Craft Glenn Adamson locates the emergence of craft as an interconnected counterpoint to industrial modernity. The existence of today’s 10

above: Installation detail, Crafting Denim.

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Interviews

Interviews with Makers of Crafting Denim A goal of Crafting Denim was for each maker to describe their product and practice in their own words. The exhibition included commentary that resulted from individual interviews focused on inspiration, process, and the relationship with craft and design. The interviews are excerpted below.

Left: Raleigh Denim, “Tools and labels. White Oak and Nihon Menpu woven labels, stamped leather back patch, Raleigh denim, flasher, metal rivets,” 2022.

Top right: W.H. Ranch

Dungarees,

“Branding tool, tailor’s chalk, copper rivets, and metal buttons,” c.2022.

Bottom Right: Bowery Blue Makers, “Singer sewing machine oil can, leather back patch, cutting tool,” c.1900-current.

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Interviews

What brought you to denim and starting your brand?

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I’m into making things and being entrepreneurial…I wanted less, but better-quality things. With jeans, I made a pair every single day for about two years; then I started running into people who had worked in the denim factories. The building blocks of the past were still here; old dudes up in the mountains would help me fix things. I’ve spent 10,000 hours in the pattern room with our 90-year-old pattern maker (Christel Ellsberg) tweaking every corner, point, everything – so we can produce the jeans that we’re making consistently and proportionally.

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Bowery Blue Makers:

Jeans were the only thing I could fully dedicate myself to without being swayed by trends. It’s a project so vast and involved that I know it’ll never come to an end even if I spend the rest of my life on it. I started my brand because I knew how difficult it would be to get customers to choose my own plain raw jeans, and I wanted to try and tackle that challenge. Jeans are something we wear every day so it’s a real responsibility when someone trusts me with something like that.

Raleigh Denim:

W.H. Ranch Dungarees:

In the early 2000s I was in design school and jeans were not popular back then, [and] the jeans that did exist were pretty bad…raw denim wasn’t really out there. A friend of mine had some Japanese magazines and they profiled some denim brands and you could tell they were so cool and different, and they were just replicating what Levi 501s used to be, back in the ’50s and before, and they weren’t made that way anymore. I became obsessed with it…. About 10 years later I started making neckties and selling them on Etsy, which connected me to suppliers and distributors to solve the problem of getting the good stuff [denims, zippers, etc.]. I sold all my best cowboy boots to buy the raw material and machines, enough material for ten pairs, which I sold in about a week. I couldn’t believe it.

left: Raleigh Denim “Exploded pattern pieces.”

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Interviews

structure in the world. Another major factor for me is sophisticated design – Singer machines are so captivating compared to most industrial sewing machines, which tend to be quite crudely built.

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Raleigh Denim:

Our machines are not necessarily new, but they are new to me. We have examples from the 1930s through the 1990s. We don’t use old machines for the sake of using old machines, but to make the most perfect stitch for the thing that we’re doing. I love being able to use machines that are built with the philosophy of quality, that have lasted this long and now we’re using those tools to build jeans with the same philosophy…It makes me feel like when I’m in Europe and walking on streets that are 2,000 or 1,500 years old and you feel the spirits of people who lived there in the stones. The machines do that too; some of the parts wear a little bit, but not in a bad way. I feel a spiritual connection to the older machines.

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How do your tools or machines inspire your work? /

Bowery Blue MakerS:

Vintage sewing machines and tools are absolutely essential in the pursuit of my craft. Their charm and grandeur enable me to do my work. Being able to use Singer sewing machines in particular is a great source of joy and creative inspiration for me working here in New York. This is because the Singer Company was founded in New York and has hugely contributed to the local fabric here. Singer partly funded the Statue of Liberty, for instance, and the company also constructed the Singer Building, which was once the tallest 16

W.H. Ranch Dungarees:

I have a 1942 Singer 101 – they made millions of them; it’s what tailors used back then, cast iron, one of the best straight stitching machines you can find. It can get through leather; it’s a great versatile machine and for 90% of my jeans I use that on lock-stitches ‘cause it’s just easy to use, and fun sewing on and you don’t need a big industrial clutch motor… a friend gave me an old Union Special 4300 which is the overlock serge-lock machine which is beautiful…

I’m not pigeonholed into using old pre-war machines; I just want what’s best.

LEFT: Singer Corporation, “Singer Sewing Machine 31-15,” 1910. p.18: Raleigh Denim, “Assorted cut denim pattern pieces,” 2022.

P.19: Bowery Blue Makers, “Work order.”

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Interviews

How do you see personalization and individuality in your product?

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Raleigh Denim:

At the beginning Sarah and I designed each pair, made each pair, and signed each pair. It was our design, our craft and our art, all at the same time. As we built our team the people actively crafting each piece should put their mark on it and their name on it.

When people’s hearts are in it and their skill level is there, they can start writing their names on it. I never wanted to run a traditional factory. I wanted it to feel like a workshop where every single person in the shop cares as much as I do. It’s not my thing anymore, it’s our thing, and I want that to be represented. Our finished product is a blank canvas. By the time somebody buys it it’s day one of their process and every time somebody wears it, it becomes theirs and only theirs.

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Bowery Blue MakerS:

A pair of craft jeans made lovingly and with the utmost care doesn’t need to have fine details or an original design. Those jeans can still impart a human familiarity and warmth even if they’re just made of raw unwashed indigo blue denim. That’s the big difference between my work and industrially produced garments. For me, that sort of personalization and individuality is what’s important in a pair of jeans.

W.H. Ranch Dungarees:

With the emerging craftsman market that Etsy was fostering, companies [suppliers] started figuring out that they could sell orders of 100 and not 1,000 buttons, rivets etc.… so stuff started becoming way more accessible. Now there are so many people who can do things with denim. Before you had a company you had to have distribution, [and] it took a lot to do that. Now a shmuck like me in his basement can create a line and put it out there in small batches, and the idea is at least out there even if it’s not millions of pairs.

Left: Raleigh Denim, “Cotton pocket lining with screened hip bone images, signed by the sewer Ludy Yessenia Amador, with woven Nihon Menpu denim label.”

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Interviews

A goal for the exhibition is showing how jeans interconnect with fashion, craft, and industrial design. How do you define what you do?

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Bowery Blue MakerS:

A tailor works by hand. That aligns with my idea of what “craft” is.

Continuing in that vein, I work as a singular craftsman who makes complete pairs of jeans using the same sort of foot-pedaled sewing machines that Jacob Davis (designer of the first Levi’s) used…When you’re sewing jeans every day, you gradually polish your skills and naturally become able to reproduce the same quality and finish each time. Then it becomes more a matter of artisanal technique, far removed from what Okamoto [Tarō Okamoto, Japanese artist and theorist] describes as the essence of making something “by hand.” This means I have to employ a number of tactics to make my work as irreproducible as possible. Using older machinery is more prone to operational hiccups, for instance, or using raw denim that offers such unique variation. I also use trims made of materials like iron and copper and let them age freely, letting them rust or mold.

When I know who will wear the item I’m working on and I sew with that particular person in mind, that naturally leads to variation in my work, even if it’s the same style as another project. These are just a few examples of how I put my heart into my craft and try to resist a reproducible, skilled technique.

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Raleigh Denim:

I think about all three all the time, not one or the other. Part of the alchemy of what we’re doing is a little bit of fashion, a little bit of history, a little bit of craft, a little bit of story, [and] a bit of

American made heritage; we’re throwing it all into the soup. The craft part of it is a total obsession. It’s one of my favorite parts of what we do. I don’t think anything we do exists without all three of these. We want to design and make new things, [and] build on the shoulders of all the history, beauty, and character of those things, but when someone picks it up I want it to feel new and different and like an evolution.

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W.H. Ranch Dungarees:

I don’t see it as fashion ‘cause I wasn’t in the business of trends, and fashion is trendy to me. I’m interested in what’s timeless, what’s classic: is this an heirloom piece that once I’m done with it I can put in a trunk and my boys can have it 20 years from now, 50 years from now?… Denim can be fashionable which is great, and that keeps it relevant. I consider it more craftsman-like than tailoring. I’m not a good fine tailor, and I gotta be able to work on and repair my machines. I’m just as handy with a wrench and a pair of pliers as I am with a needle and thread.

Above LEFT: W.H. Ranch Dungarees, “W.H. Ranch Freedom Ryder, woven label detail,” 2017. above Right: W.H. Ranch Dungarees, “Iron Branding tool for leather back patch branding.”

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Exhibition Checklist

Bowery Blue Makers (Takayuki Echigoya) /

Brooklyn, NY Jeans, Type 201, 2019 Legend Kiyama 13oz Raw Japanese Denim made in Okayama from blended American Cotton

Bowery Blue Makers (Takayuki Echigoya) /

Brooklyn, NY Jeans, Type SO, 2017 Legend Kiyama 12oz Raw Japanese Denim made in Okayama from blended American Cotton

Singer Corporation, USA /

Singer Sewing Machine 31 –15, 1910 S_i_ n _ g _ e _ r _ _ C_ o _ r _ p _ o _ r _ a _ t _i_ o _ n _,_ _U_S_A_ _/_ _S_i_n_g_e_r_ _S_e_w_i_n_g_ _ M _ a _ c _ h _ i _ n _ e _ _ 3 _ 1 _ _ –1 _ 5 _ , _ _ 1 _ 9 _ 1 _ 0 _ _ Collection of Takayuki Echigoya

Laura Pegus for Raleigh Denim /

Ludy Yessenia Amador Signed cotton Pocket Lining for Raleigh Jeans, 2022

Raleigh Denim (Sarah Yarborough & Victor Lytvinenko) /

Raleigh, NC Jeans, Graham, 2022 Nihon Menpu Raw Denim

Raleigh Denim (Sarah Yarborough & Victor Lytvinenko) /

Raleigh, NC Jeans, 2021 Original White Oak Denim

W.H. Ranch Dungarees (Ryan Martin) /

Kansas City, KS 1942 Freedom Ryder, 2017

W.H. Ranch Dungarees (Ryan Martin) /

Kansas City, KS Artisan Challenge Winning Jeans, 2015 above: W.H. Ranch Dungarees, “Artisan Challenge Winning Jeans,” 2015 (Front). Raleigh Denim, “Original White Oak Jeans,” 2021 (Back). p.26: Installation detail, Crafting Denim.

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acknowledgements

Curator’s Acknowledgements I would like to thank everyone at the Center for Craft for their support and guidance, and Michelle Millar Fisher for her invaluable advice. A special thanks to those who helped me think and talk through this project as it grew; Elizabeth St. George, Alexis Romano, Isabelle Held, and Colleen Hill. And finally, most importantly, thanks to the makers and their assistants, whose work never fails to inspire and without whom this exhibition wouldn’t be possible.

Dr. Sonya Abrego is a New York City based design historian specializing in American fashion. She takes an interdisciplinary approach to examining the interconnections between dress, popular culture,art, craft, and design.