January 8, 2020 • 13 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck.
There's j J. Brand new guest producer. We've got this
revolving door going on. It's just like a beautiful and
this is short stuffy JJ's he's a pro though, Like
it's not like you can just show up here take
a ticket like you're at the deli. No, no, nothing
(00:26):
like that. This isn't This isn't cats as deli. Hell,
I'd be pretty happy for. Nor is it doctor Katz's
therapy office. Anytime we hear of doctor Kats, I think
of um. I think it was dom Arera. He used
to be a regular on that and he used to
go like Dr Cats, And it's always it's been in
(00:47):
my head since. Oh man, Dr Cats was great. I
miss it really was. Let's go watch some after this. Okay,
all right, but let's talk about cord of Roy first. Sure, sure,
that's fine. We can talk about about that, because you
see him wearing it in honor of today. I know
you're wearing some rust colored corduroy pants that I would
say are maybe a probably about a twelve ten to
(01:11):
twelve whale, yeah, because maybe eight. They're pretty standard Levi's
chords whatever that whale is. And if you're wondering what
we're talking about, we'll tell you here in a minute
after we get to a little bit of the the
history here, which is debatable. Apparently it is because it's
either French in origin, uh korda do roy the King's cord.
(01:37):
But my money is a little more towards what the
Brooks brothers say, which is no, mate, it was street
streetwear in eighteenth century England. I don't think the Brooks
brothers sound like that. No, what do they sound like? Oh? Really?
I can just think of Albert Brooks and super Dave
Osborne as the Brooks brothers. Oh that's good. Why Dave
(01:59):
oz Born? He's not a Brooks, is he? They're brothers? Man? No? No?
That wow? Man? Their parents must have been really cool
probably so okay. So either way, what we're really talking
about here is where the origin of the name for
the fabric came from. It looks chuck like corduroy has
(02:21):
its roots way further back than that that. It comes from,
possibly and probably a type of fabric from dating back
to about two CE back in ancient Egypt called um Fustians.
Names after the city where they were made, al Fustat,
(02:42):
which is I think Fustian is still actually a term
for certain types of corduroy or certain types of fabric,
including corduroy that are real thick and squishy and and
originally they were pretty coarse. Yeah, but that Brooks Brothers
story has a lot of credibility because the chord uh
(03:02):
referencing the rose, the ridges, the chords, and d Roy
which is a wolf fabric, right. That sounds like a
pretty open and shut case to me. Now, yeah, I'm good,
I'm no, I'm with you. I'm going with the Brooks Brothers.
Um interpretation to it was really just the um the
impression you did that I had an issue, okay, But
(03:25):
the fabric itself you think that is Egyptian or Middle Ages,
and then uh later Egyptian you know. So, so it
was Egyptian first, but it was um, it wasn't corded.
There weren't whales on it. It was just one thick
piece of like velvet kind of right, where you have
(03:46):
a certain kind of fabric and then woven on top
of that fabric, is it the fabric that makes it
kind of plushier, thicker, um sturdier, and that is what
corduroy is. That it's as base um, and that that's
what they were making for many many centuries. And then finally,
at some point during the Middle Ages, somebody said, Hey,
I've got a really good idea about this. Let's turn
(04:07):
this into corduroy by cutting rows into this stuff. Right.
What we do know in the United States is that
it was first made in Woolsta, mass In about seventeen eighty.
And uh, I do need to shout out Corduroy the
Bear here because not only is it does it appear
in this house stuff works short article on corduroy. But
I have a pretty great Corturoy the Bear history, which
(04:29):
was I loved that book a lot as a kid,
did you. I was aware of it, but I think
it was a little ahead of my time. Okay, I
think it was ahead of my time too. I mean
I think it predates me. But I love the story.
And my mom made she got a teddy bear that
looked kind of like corduroy and made him little corturoy
(04:53):
overalls and shorts and what was missing a button? So
that is so sweet. Yeah, I had my very own
kind of one of the great things about my mom.
And she could really so and so she could make
me things when they did not exist on the toy market.
Oh that's me. Or she could save some money and
just make her own knockoffs. Well we did that as well,
right right. I had more than one T shirt made
(05:14):
from like curtain fabric. That's hilarious. Um My mom used
to take my T shirts and like stuff them and
turn them into pillows when I outgrew them. Oh that's sweet. Yeah,
it was pretty sweet. I have no idea where they
are anymore, but yeah, I had a few. I had
one that said BMX. Oh yeah, that'd be pretty cool
to have today. It really would. So we mentioned the whales, uh,
(05:36):
and I think we should get to that before we
take our little break. The whales are those rigid little
ridges W A L E. S. I'm so glad you
spelled it. Yeah. Um, And it's the higher the whale count,
the smaller the little ridge is. So if you have
worn one of those really fine sort of like corduroy Oxford's.
(06:00):
I'm not a huge fan of them for myself. I
don't mind the way they look, but I've never liked
them for me personally. But that's about a sixteen whale.
What don't you like about them? It's just not my bag.
I'm not. I'm not big on collar church period. They've
they ruffled my neck and my chin. Yeah, um, I
but that particular one you just described about the sixteen whale.
Cord think is typically called pink cord. Yeah, you have
(06:22):
some of those, right, I do not. But I have
to say researching corduroy made me want to go buy
some corduroy stuff, so I think it's in the offing. Yeah.
My problem with my chords is they really wear out
the knees very fast. And I'm not he spends a
lot of time on his knees. I'm not scrubbing floor
as much or anything. So I don't know what the
deal is. Okay, well that's a mystery. I think we
(06:45):
can go to a commercial break on. All right, we'll
figure it out. Well, now we're on the road, driving
in your truck. Want to learn a thing or two
from Josh Madam, Chuck stuff you should know? All right,
m all right, Chuck, we're back in. Um, let's talk
(07:15):
a little more about how corduroy is made, right, because
this blew my mind when I finally saw some diagrams
and I understood it. All right, let's hear it. So
with a typical fabric, you take two different sets of
yarns and you weave them together perpendicular to one another,
and you have fabric. When you're making a fustian, like
a thicker, fluffier fabric like say terry cloth or velvet
(07:39):
or corduroy, you it's very nice, isn't it, you use
a third set of yarn, And so what you have
is that basic, you know, flat fabric, and then woven
into the top of that is that thicker pile of
fabric called the um worst right, okay, And so just
(08:01):
leaving it like that, you have something like velvet or
again like terry cloth, which you love so much. But
if you want to make corduroy, you take that that
um fussy and fabric and then you take a very
sharp set of scissors or something like that, and you
cut a line all the way along the length of
the fabric. And what you've just done is created a
two whale um bolt of corduroy. But that's no one's
(08:25):
gonna wear that, right, Yeah, And two whale bolt is
a great band name, by the way it is. That's
funny because I was just gonna say, the only person
who wear that is somebody like Flee from the Red
Hot Chili Peppers, but he'll wear anything as pants as
we've seen over the years. Um. So you start making
more cuts and more cuts, and like you were saying,
depending on how supple or um nice you want to
(08:45):
make the fabric, the more cuts you're gonna make. But
however many cuts there are. However many ridges there are
per inch. That's the whale count, and that's kind of
describes how thick the ridges are. But the point is
when you make that cut, what you've done is cut
that top layer of fabric, the additional third set of yarn,
(09:06):
and you've cut it into two and you've exposed the
other traditional two yarn set of fabric underneath. And that's
what corduroy is. It's a raised ridge that used to
be all one complete set of yarn, and then there's
valleys that are the fabric below. Yeah, I've been practicing
this for for days. That's good, and it's still didn't
(09:29):
go according to plant, Like I want to cut my
thigh with the razor blade, right now. I'm so frustrated, Chuck. No,
I think that was perfect actually, what you end up
with and how they actually referred to it in the
industry as a three dimensional fabric, a three dimensional pile weave. Uh.
And like you've mentioned, velvet and terry cloth are also
three dimensional fabrics and it's pretty great. Um. They say
(09:52):
in here, uh that you need to steam or fluff corduroy.
I don't think that's the case, or I've never done that. No,
only a Brooks Brothers would do that. But I do
have a pretty rock end corduroy coat from back in
the day. Uh. I mean this thing is I probably
had it for twenty years and I got it second hand,
(10:14):
and it is beautiful and it's got a really fat
whales on it and I don't pull it out much anymore.
It used to be my New York coat, but I've
evolved a bit since then, but I still have it
and it's it's really a nice coat, that is. Yeah,
I think I know that coat you're talking about. I'm
either confusing you or Joe McCormick has one that he
likes to rock a lot. It's probably Joe, because I
haven't one mind in years, okay, but you got your
(10:36):
second hand twentysomething years ago, so that would have coincided
roughly with the last corduroy revival. And the first one
I remember was in the nineties. Do you remember that. Yeah,
I mean they were big in the fifties, certainly in
the sixties and seventies, and then in the nineties. I
think that's when I got this thing, and I got
to I got one shorter one that had a narrower whale,
(10:59):
and then this longer one that has the big fat whales,
and I think I still have both of them. Is
it like a trench coat at corduroy trench coat. Yeah,
it's like a long corturoy coat with the big brown
buttons and like a wool uh lapel. Is it like
a barn coat or something? What a barn coat? I'm
not sure what that is. It sounds like what you're
(11:20):
just scribing, You're gonna have to wear this in some day.
I'll bring it in, all right, cool bringing in for
show and tell. But yeah, So it was kind of
big in the fifties, really took off in the late sixties,
and then really huge in the seventies and then went
nowhere until the nineties, and then I guess this thing
said in the two thousand tens that came back or
the two thousands that came back in which I was
not aware of that at all. Well, I've always rocked
(11:42):
the cord pants, but over the years it has ranged
from like school uniform fabric to UH. In World War One,
low ranking soldiers wore it UH work where if you
worked in like a factory, because the stuff is pretty warm,
because it's thicker, and it's durable too, Yeah, very durable,
excepting the knees and um. And then it's you know,
(12:04):
sometimes it's also been looked at as something a little fancier, right,
which apparently originally was it was sportswear for the upper
class um, and then somehow just kind of fell out
of favor and became associated with the working class and
the lower classes, and then it's it just kind of
stayed that way until, like I think, starting in the twenties,
(12:25):
for a little while there it was pretty common as
um upholstery for cars. Did you know that. Yeah, I
have seen a car upholstered in Cortroy and it's pretty awesome.
I'll bet it's pretty awesome. The only way that could
be any better is if there were like patchwork corduroy. Yeah,
now I know the jacket that you're talking about. That
is Joe's for sure. Yes, I think it even has
elbow patches. Yeah. His is more like a blazer, sure,
(12:48):
not a duster like yours. Right, what else you got?
I got nothing else? Man. I support corduroy, like knowing
a little bit more how it's made. And uh, I say,
wear it never out of fashion. Up with corduroy, agreed. Um.
If you want to know more about corduroy, by the way,
check out headles H E D D E l S
(13:09):
dot com. They have something called Corduroy read between the
Lines of the Wailed Fabric by James Smith, and it
has a picture that will finally explain better than I
possibly could how corduroy is made very simply. Yes, Okay, Well,
see you guys later, because short stuff is out. Stuff
(13:30):
you should know is production of iHeart Radios. How stuff works.
For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Hello, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck.
There's j J. Brand new guest producer. We've got this
revolving door going on. It's just like a beautiful and
this is short stuffy JJ's he's a pro though, Like
it's not like you can just show up here take
a ticket like you're at the deli. No, no, nothing
(00:26):
like that. This isn't This isn't cats as deli. Hell,
I'd be pretty happy for. Nor is it doctor Katz's
therapy office. Anytime we hear of doctor Kats, I think
of um. I think it was dom Arera. He used
to be a regular on that and he used to
go like Dr Cats, And it's always it's been in
(00:47):
my head since. Oh man, Dr Cats was great. I
miss it really was. Let's go watch some after this. Okay,
all right, but let's talk about cord of Roy first. Sure, sure,
that's fine. We can talk about about that, because you
see him wearing it in honor of today. I know
you're wearing some rust colored corduroy pants that I would
say are maybe a probably about a twelve ten to
(01:11):
twelve whale, yeah, because maybe eight. They're pretty standard Levi's
chords whatever that whale is. And if you're wondering what
we're talking about, we'll tell you here in a minute
after we get to a little bit of the the
history here, which is debatable. Apparently it is because it's
either French in origin, uh korda do roy the King's cord.
(01:37):
But my money is a little more towards what the
Brooks brothers say, which is no, mate, it was street
streetwear in eighteenth century England. I don't think the Brooks
brothers sound like that. No, what do they sound like? Oh? Really?
I can just think of Albert Brooks and super Dave
Osborne as the Brooks brothers. Oh that's good. Why Dave
(01:59):
oz Born? He's not a Brooks, is he? They're brothers? Man? No? No?
That wow? Man? Their parents must have been really cool
probably so okay. So either way, what we're really talking
about here is where the origin of the name for
the fabric came from. It looks chuck like corduroy has
(02:21):
its roots way further back than that that. It comes from,
possibly and probably a type of fabric from dating back
to about two CE back in ancient Egypt called um Fustians.
Names after the city where they were made, al Fustat,
(02:42):
which is I think Fustian is still actually a term
for certain types of corduroy or certain types of fabric,
including corduroy that are real thick and squishy and and
originally they were pretty coarse. Yeah, but that Brooks Brothers
story has a lot of credibility because the chord uh
(03:02):
referencing the rose, the ridges, the chords, and d Roy
which is a wolf fabric, right. That sounds like a
pretty open and shut case to me. Now, yeah, I'm good,
I'm no, I'm with you. I'm going with the Brooks Brothers.
Um interpretation to it was really just the um the
impression you did that I had an issue, okay, But
(03:25):
the fabric itself you think that is Egyptian or Middle Ages,
and then uh later Egyptian you know. So, so it
was Egyptian first, but it was um, it wasn't corded.
There weren't whales on it. It was just one thick
piece of like velvet kind of right, where you have
(03:46):
a certain kind of fabric and then woven on top
of that fabric, is it the fabric that makes it
kind of plushier, thicker, um sturdier, and that is what
corduroy is. That it's as base um, and that that's
what they were making for many many centuries. And then finally,
at some point during the Middle Ages, somebody said, Hey,
I've got a really good idea about this. Let's turn
(04:07):
this into corduroy by cutting rows into this stuff. Right.
What we do know in the United States is that
it was first made in Woolsta, mass In about seventeen eighty.
And uh, I do need to shout out Corduroy the
Bear here because not only is it does it appear
in this house stuff works short article on corduroy. But
I have a pretty great Corturoy the Bear history, which
(04:29):
was I loved that book a lot as a kid,
did you. I was aware of it, but I think
it was a little ahead of my time. Okay, I
think it was ahead of my time too. I mean
I think it predates me. But I love the story.
And my mom made she got a teddy bear that
looked kind of like corduroy and made him little corturoy
(04:53):
overalls and shorts and what was missing a button? So
that is so sweet. Yeah, I had my very own
kind of one of the great things about my mom.
And she could really so and so she could make
me things when they did not exist on the toy market.
Oh that's me. Or she could save some money and
just make her own knockoffs. Well we did that as well,
right right. I had more than one T shirt made
(05:14):
from like curtain fabric. That's hilarious. Um My mom used
to take my T shirts and like stuff them and
turn them into pillows when I outgrew them. Oh that's sweet. Yeah,
it was pretty sweet. I have no idea where they
are anymore, but yeah, I had a few. I had
one that said BMX. Oh yeah, that'd be pretty cool
to have today. It really would. So we mentioned the whales, uh,
(05:36):
and I think we should get to that before we
take our little break. The whales are those rigid little
ridges W A L E. S. I'm so glad you
spelled it. Yeah. Um, And it's the higher the whale count,
the smaller the little ridge is. So if you have
worn one of those really fine sort of like corduroy Oxford's.
(06:00):
I'm not a huge fan of them for myself. I
don't mind the way they look, but I've never liked
them for me personally. But that's about a sixteen whale.
What don't you like about them? It's just not my bag.
I'm not. I'm not big on collar church period. They've
they ruffled my neck and my chin. Yeah, um, I
but that particular one you just described about the sixteen whale.
Cord think is typically called pink cord. Yeah, you have
(06:22):
some of those, right, I do not. But I have
to say researching corduroy made me want to go buy
some corduroy stuff, so I think it's in the offing. Yeah.
My problem with my chords is they really wear out
the knees very fast. And I'm not he spends a
lot of time on his knees. I'm not scrubbing floor
as much or anything. So I don't know what the
deal is. Okay, well that's a mystery. I think we
(06:45):
can go to a commercial break on. All right, we'll
figure it out. Well, now we're on the road, driving
in your truck. Want to learn a thing or two
from Josh Madam, Chuck stuff you should know? All right,
m all right, Chuck, we're back in. Um, let's talk
(07:15):
a little more about how corduroy is made, right, because
this blew my mind when I finally saw some diagrams
and I understood it. All right, let's hear it. So
with a typical fabric, you take two different sets of
yarns and you weave them together perpendicular to one another,
and you have fabric. When you're making a fustian, like
a thicker, fluffier fabric like say terry cloth or velvet
(07:39):
or corduroy, you it's very nice, isn't it, you use
a third set of yarn, And so what you have
is that basic, you know, flat fabric, and then woven
into the top of that is that thicker pile of
fabric called the um worst right, okay, And so just
(08:01):
leaving it like that, you have something like velvet or
again like terry cloth, which you love so much. But
if you want to make corduroy, you take that that
um fussy and fabric and then you take a very
sharp set of scissors or something like that, and you
cut a line all the way along the length of
the fabric. And what you've just done is created a
two whale um bolt of corduroy. But that's no one's
(08:25):
gonna wear that, right, Yeah, And two whale bolt is
a great band name, by the way it is. That's
funny because I was just gonna say, the only person
who wear that is somebody like Flee from the Red
Hot Chili Peppers, but he'll wear anything as pants as
we've seen over the years. Um. So you start making
more cuts and more cuts, and like you were saying,
depending on how supple or um nice you want to
(08:45):
make the fabric, the more cuts you're gonna make. But
however many cuts there are. However many ridges there are
per inch. That's the whale count, and that's kind of
describes how thick the ridges are. But the point is
when you make that cut, what you've done is cut
that top layer of fabric, the additional third set of yarn,
(09:06):
and you've cut it into two and you've exposed the
other traditional two yarn set of fabric underneath. And that's
what corduroy is. It's a raised ridge that used to
be all one complete set of yarn, and then there's
valleys that are the fabric below. Yeah, I've been practicing
this for for days. That's good, and it's still didn't
(09:29):
go according to plant, Like I want to cut my
thigh with the razor blade, right now. I'm so frustrated, Chuck. No,
I think that was perfect actually, what you end up
with and how they actually referred to it in the
industry as a three dimensional fabric, a three dimensional pile weave. Uh.
And like you've mentioned, velvet and terry cloth are also
three dimensional fabrics and it's pretty great. Um. They say
(09:52):
in here, uh that you need to steam or fluff corduroy.
I don't think that's the case, or I've never done that. No,
only a Brooks Brothers would do that. But I do
have a pretty rock end corduroy coat from back in
the day. Uh. I mean this thing is I probably
had it for twenty years and I got it second hand,
(10:14):
and it is beautiful and it's got a really fat
whales on it and I don't pull it out much anymore.
It used to be my New York coat, but I've
evolved a bit since then, but I still have it
and it's it's really a nice coat, that is. Yeah,
I think I know that coat you're talking about. I'm
either confusing you or Joe McCormick has one that he
likes to rock a lot. It's probably Joe, because I
haven't one mind in years, okay, but you got your
(10:36):
second hand twentysomething years ago, so that would have coincided
roughly with the last corduroy revival. And the first one
I remember was in the nineties. Do you remember that. Yeah,
I mean they were big in the fifties, certainly in
the sixties and seventies, and then in the nineties. I
think that's when I got this thing, and I got
to I got one shorter one that had a narrower whale,
(10:59):
and then this longer one that has the big fat whales,
and I think I still have both of them. Is
it like a trench coat at corduroy trench coat. Yeah,
it's like a long corturoy coat with the big brown
buttons and like a wool uh lapel. Is it like
a barn coat or something? What a barn coat? I'm
not sure what that is. It sounds like what you're
(11:20):
just scribing, You're gonna have to wear this in some day.
I'll bring it in, all right, cool bringing in for
show and tell. But yeah, So it was kind of
big in the fifties, really took off in the late sixties,
and then really huge in the seventies and then went
nowhere until the nineties, and then I guess this thing
said in the two thousand tens that came back or
the two thousands that came back in which I was
not aware of that at all. Well, I've always rocked
(11:42):
the cord pants, but over the years it has ranged
from like school uniform fabric to UH. In World War One,
low ranking soldiers wore it UH work where if you
worked in like a factory, because the stuff is pretty warm,
because it's thicker, and it's durable too, Yeah, very durable,
excepting the knees and um. And then it's you know,
(12:04):
sometimes it's also been looked at as something a little fancier, right,
which apparently originally was it was sportswear for the upper
class um, and then somehow just kind of fell out
of favor and became associated with the working class and
the lower classes, and then it's it just kind of
stayed that way until, like I think, starting in the twenties,
(12:25):
for a little while there it was pretty common as
um upholstery for cars. Did you know that. Yeah, I
have seen a car upholstered in Cortroy and it's pretty awesome.
I'll bet it's pretty awesome. The only way that could
be any better is if there were like patchwork corduroy. Yeah,
now I know the jacket that you're talking about. That
is Joe's for sure. Yes, I think it even has
elbow patches. Yeah. His is more like a blazer, sure,
(12:48):
not a duster like yours. Right, what else you got?
I got nothing else? Man. I support corduroy, like knowing
a little bit more how it's made. And uh, I say,
wear it never out of fashion. Up with corduroy, agreed. Um.
If you want to know more about corduroy, by the way,
check out headles H E D D E l S
(13:09):
dot com. They have something called Corduroy read between the
Lines of the Wailed Fabric by James Smith, and it
has a picture that will finally explain better than I
possibly could how corduroy is made very simply. Yes, Okay, Well,
see you guys later, because short stuff is out. Stuff
(13:30):
you should know is production of iHeart Radios. How stuff works.
For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.