Josh Sirlin

Some men get one life. Josh Sirlin has lived about thirteen, and he is nowhere near finished.

He designs Black Bear Brand, a storied name he raised out of a century of silence and made his own. That is the part that fits on a page. It explains almost nothing.

Ask him about almost anything and you will find he has been close enough to it to have something real to say. Very little of what he knows came cheap. He has a habit of finding his way into the company of people who are the very best in the world at something, and then throwing himself in beside them. It is how he has learned nearly everything he knows, and it is how he builds. The finest mills on earth. Sewing rooms run by people who have given their lives to the work. He has never had any interest in doing a thing alone. He has an interest in doing it right, with the right people, and that is another matter entirely.

His life reads like a run of tall tales that all happen to be true. He has pointed a motorcycle at the horizon and ridden clear across the country to sit in rooms he had no business being in. He has been swallowed by a Montana canyon inside a running herd, cowboys at full cry, and stayed in the middle of it for miles rather than give way. He has stepped out of aircraft beside men who fly for a living, and once the sky very nearly kept him. He walked away, as he somehow always does.

Twice a year he returns to Japan to ride with men he met a decade ago and has never spoken a single word to. Not one. There is no language between them and they have become family regardless. An old master in Tokyo has been marking his skin for years now in that same silence.

He is sober. It is the part he holds most sacred. He carried his life to the edge and was allowed to walk back, and he does not regret a mile of the road that took him there. His days run on ritual. Cold water before the sun is up. The lake at first light. Wild game and whole food and not much else.

Nothing in his life is accidental. The chair, the cup, the food on the plate, the people he keeps close and the hours he gives them. He keeps only what he can feel. Everything he does, he does in order to feel. That is the shape of him. The rest you would have to ask.

Who is Josh Sirlin?

Josh Sirlin is the founder and designer of Black Bear Brand, a storied Seattle name he raised out of a century of silence and made his own. He has lived about thirteen lives. He rides motorcycles in America and in Japan, he is sober, and he builds goods meant to be kept, repaired, and passed down. Nothing in his life is accidental. Everything he does, he does in order to feel.