Brown Cotton Under the Blue: The Limited Edition 15oz Button Fly Cowboy Jeans
Brown Cotton Under the Blue: The Limited Edition 15oz Button Fly Cowboy Jeans
The warp is spun from cotton that grows brown. The indigo goes on top. Time does the rest.
Cotton That Grows Brown
Cotton does not have to be white. Naturally colored cotton is believed to have first been grown in the Andes about five thousand years ago, in shades of brown, tan, and green. On the north coast of Peru, the Mochica people kept colored cotton growing for some two thousand years.
The fiber was short, and when cotton went to the big spinning mills, the world went to white. In 1982 a young Californian named Sally Fox was working for a cotton breeder when she came across a bag of brown cotton seed. She spent years selecting plants by hand until the fiber grew long enough for modern machines, and each new color took her close to a decade. Naturally brown cotton has been growing in the modern world ever since.
A Thick Yarn
Cotton yarn is measured by its count. The count is the number of 840 yard hanks that one pound of the yarn will make. The lower the number, the thicker the yarn. A 6-count yarn is heavy, round, and strong.
The warp of our 15oz denim begins with 6-count yarn spun from natural brown cotton. That yarn is then rope dyed in indigo. Rope dyeing lays the blue on the outside of each yarn and leaves the core as it was. In most denim the core is white. Here the core is brown. As the denim ages, the indigo gives way to the brown cotton beneath it.
The Button Fly
Jeans closed with buttons from the start. The first riveted jeans, patented in 1873 by a Reno tailor named Jacob Davis and his San Francisco cloth supplier, carried copper rivets at the corners of the pockets and a row of buttons down the front.
The zipper came later. In 1934 the Prince of Wales had his pants made with a zip fly. In 1937 Esquire took the zipper's side in what the trade called the Battle of the Fly. Jeans makers added zippers around the middle of the century, at first for women back East. Women working on western ranches had been wearing button fly jeans for years.
The buttons never left. A row of them down the front of a heavy pair of jeans is one of the oldest sights in American clothing.
The Cowboy Jeans, Heavier
The Limited Edition HEAVEY Button Fly Cowboy Jeans are a limited edition of our COWBOY Jeans. They are made from a special 15oz selvedge denim woven for Black Bear Brand in Okayama, Japan. Our Indigo Cowboy Jeans and BLACK Cowboy Jeans are 13oz selvedge. This cloth is heavier, and the yarn underneath is a different color.
They come in two lengths, 35 inches and 40 inches, both long on purpose. How a pair of jeans sits is personal style. I roll mine. Other men have theirs hemmed by a tailor once the jeans have been washed the way they mean to keep washing them.
The cloth is brown cotton under indigo, and the buttons run down the front. The limited edition lives in the Black Bear Brand Factory Store with the rest of our jeans.
A Way Of Life.
Shop the Story
Limited Edition Black Bear Brand - HEAVEY button fly Cowboy Jeans
Black Bear Brand - Indigo Cowboy Jeans
Black Bear Brand - BLACK Cowboy Jeans
Related Reading
What Makes Japanese Selvedge Denim Different