The Engineer Stripe: A Cloth Brought Back From 1913
The Engineer Stripe: A Cloth Brought Back From 1913
A stripe that had not been woven in over a hundred years, read off an original and made again in Okayama.
What was in the boxes
From the day this brand came into my hands I have chased its past. Catalogs. Photographs. Garments. Anything that survived. I hold original Black Bear Brand catalogs from 1917. I have found out more about this company than anyone alive, and there is still a great deal I do not know.
Along the way I found the engineer stripe. It is a cloth particular to this brand, and it came in a blue and a tan. I tracked down three of the original engineer stripe coveralls, around a hundred and ten years old now. One of them fits me perfectly.
Then I found the tin pants. I wanted a pair for myself more than I wanted almost anything. They are from 1930, which makes them ninety six years old, and they are the reason this whole thing started.
How you read a cloth
You cannot photograph a stripe and have it come back right. You have to read it. The width of every band. The spacing between them. The way the yarn was spun and how tightly it was twisted. The color it started as and the color a century of light turned it into. The weave under the pattern.
Get one of those wrong and the whole cloth looks like a costume. Get them all right and it looks like the original, because it is the original.
Okayama
This work happened in Okayama, Japan. We did it with TCB Jeans, led by the master Hajime Inoue. I handed them my ninety six year old tin pants and the 1913 coveralls, and they went to work.
They studied the leg. The curve of the pocket. The size of the buttonholes. They did not guess at any of it. Then they wove the engineer stripe again.
The pant, and the coat
The pant is the piece that matters most to me. It is drawn from that 1930 tin pant and made in the replicated Black Bear Brand engineer stripe from the 1913 coveralls. It carries Black Bear Brand YKK buttons and snaps. It is one hundred percent made in Okayama, and every pair is pre-washed so it comes to you settled.
The coat comes from an original 1933 engineer coat, made up in the same stripe, with the same hardware, in the same room.
October
Both release in October. They are limited, and once the run is gone the run is gone. They will also be at the first Black Bear Brand pop-up in Tokyo, on the second, third and fourth of October.
A Way Of Life.
Shop the Story
The vintage Black Bear Brand engineer pant, with TCB
The vintage Black Bear Brand engineer coat, with TCB
The Pop Over in fine engineer stripe
Related Reading
Black Bear Means Long Wear: The 1914 Factory and the Brand I Brought Back