The Canadian Olympic team announced their outfits this week and their closing ceremony jacket is a doozy. David, Reed, and Albert Muzquiz discuss that as well as the Met Gala's "American Fashion" theme, the benefits of Kapital basics, the new Aime Leon Dore New Balances, Albert's article on blazers, as well as ripping into a Federalist essay that claims overseas sweatshops are for girlbosses.

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In our last episode we talked about the earliest experiments of humans with aviation, which mostly included people covering themselves with feathers and jumping off of tall buildings. However, that lineage eventually got us to the Wright Brothers, who pioneered the first powered flight in 1903.

They sold the first plane to the United States Army in 1909, but that would be far from the last plane bought by a military. Soon, every po...

Strap in and put on your oxygen, we're taking off on another ambiguously long historical series! Aside from jeans, I can't think of another garment that tracks the history of the twentieth century better than the flight jacket. Starting in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in 1903 and leading all the way to putting a man on the moon, the garments of aviation had to advance just as quickly as the aircraft themselves.

In our first e...

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When you think of the legendary Cone Mills White Oak plant, you should also think of Ralph Tharpe. Ralph was one of the longest serving individuals at the plant, working in textile development there from 1975 up until near the mill's closure in 2017. He's now started the White Oak Legacy Foundation, a non-profit group focused on not only preserving the history ...

The history of America is often one of oppression and exploitation, and the stories of American clothing are no different. Even more important than the details and the fabrics of uniforms and work clothes is who was allowed or forced to wear them. We had the chance to talk to Miko Underwood whose new denim label Oak & Acorn shines a light on the Black American experience of denim and indigo with historically inspired pieces. Le...

On March 11, 2011, a massive earthquake rocked the country of Japan. It moved the entire country over two meters west and reset the Earth's axis and caused a subsequent tsunami that hit the east coast of the Japanese region of Tohoku with a 133 foot tall wave. The influx of water lead to a failure and meltdown of three reactor cores of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, sending nuclear radiation throughout the area.

Photographe...

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We’re talking about Tony Alamo, and yes that’s spelled like Alamo as in “remember the” but it’s pronounced like Ah-lah-mo. Regardless, he was about as despicable a human being as they come. From the late 60s onward, he ran a religious cult that separated families, forced people to work without pay, beat and sexually abused children, tried to summon peo...

We all know her, we all love her, we all follow her. Amy Leverton, aka Denim Dudes, has been at the bleeding edge of the denim business for almost two decades now. Much of it working as a "trend forecaster", which is basically the person who interprets culture and the world at large to determine what looks are going to pop and when so manufacturers can get the wheels in motion to meet the moment. Listen in as we try to pred...

This is the end, my denim friends, the end. After over 7 hours of denim history, the beginning of Japanese denim will be our last stop on our 13-part denim history series. Learn all about why Japanese people became culturally obsessed with American jeans, early pairs of knockoff 501s, how Okayama became the denim capital of Japan (and arguably the world), and more on this final installment. This is the Heddels stuff that you probab...

At least 99% of denim on the market today isn't raw, it's been stonewashed, lasered, or sandblasted into what mimics an authentically worn pair of jeans. But this wasn't always the case, pre-distressed denim is a relatively recent phenomenon, which we're going to be getting into how the fashion market took over denim and they took the indigo with them. Learn all about Jackie Kennedy's favorite denim brand, an in...

We’ve talked about gold miners, we’ve talked about ancient sailors, we’ve talked about cowboys, soldiers, and poets. Today we’re going to get into something a little heavier, and we don’t mean Iron Hearts.

Since practically its inception, denim has had a role in institutional racism in the United States. As we mentioned a few episodes ago, one of Levi’s earliest selling points was that it was “the only brand made by white labor.” W...

We've arrived at the Baby Boomer section of our indigo narrative. The transgressive postwar counterculture may have been the first to embrace denim and workwear for its style over utility, but it would be the teens of the 1950s to create the mass appeal. Join us as we discuss denim being banned in schools, jeans on screen heartthrobs, and a pop singer being denied entrance at a Vancouver hotel.

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What's up, Frogface? We're here with a bonus episode of Reed and David talking over all 80 glorious minutes of Marlon Brando's biker bad boy flick The Wild One. The movie is not good, with lots of gender dynamics that have aged poorly but it also has a lot of jeans, leather jackets, hats and knits that haven't. It's got Perfectos, Cafe Racers, A-2s, B-3s, top hats, beanies, 5-panels, 501s, ringer tees, and more!

The US government did it's best to reintegrate the young people returning from WWII, but an sizeable portion returned wanting nothing to do with it. Instead of getting a middle class job and starting a family, they wanted to do drugs, ride motorcycles, push sexual boundaries, and wear jeans. This didn't go over well at first. Our series continues with bikers and beats as Reed and David navigate denim's role in postwar c...

While on a road trip through New England in the summer of 1965, eight Japanese men unwittingly created some of the most influential images of late 2000s menswear. We're talking about Take Ivy, a cultural sensation that's become the de facto document of the 1960s prep look.

And we're talking with the person who wrote the book on the intersection of Japanese and American fashion, W. David Marx, author of Ametora: How Japa...

This was quite the year for a variety of reasons. And what better way to reflect upon it than to count down the most read articles on a pants website? Reed and David are joined by Heddels Features Editor James Smith to run down our top hits (not necessarily greatest, but top) this year and look forward to what may be yet to come.

This episode is brought to you by the Heddels Shop, listeners get 10% off with the code BLOWOUT. Also, ...