Inspiration L.A.

RIN TANAKA: The Unpretentious Center of the Wheel:

We constructed this site in a blog-style format partly in order to allow us to use a more natural and less corporate voice.  Even so, this entry is ultimately about people so I'll take the liberty of writing in the first-person.  I first communicated with Rin Tanaka five years ago.  I had bought his seminal book on Motorcycle Jackets some 2 or 3 years earlier when I still lived in the States.  I wrote to him to invite him to an exhibition of some personal work I was showing in L.A., and to offer my services as an English language proof-reader.  Like everyone else I was gobbling up his My Freedamn  books and initially thought they might benefit from a less Japanocised version of English in the text sections. I was stoked when he accepted the invitation to lunch during my show and embarrassed when he deflected the proofreading offer.  After attending his hugely inspiring reunion event last weekend I can see why he did.  The honesty and enthusiasm with which he approaches his subjects is where the magic comes from.  Only one of his subjects being vintage garments which he researches and painstakingly photographs for his books.  -But the other subject being the very real people who he encounters as he digs deeper and deeper into the world of vintage.  The collectors and aficionados all over the world who share their archives with him.

MORE ABOUT THE FOLKS THAN THE FASHION

Last weekend's event was the first in what will likely be a perennial calendar of vintage celebrations.  At first I thought it was about garments. We're all garment-obsessed here at the DENHAM studio and I was jonesing to see stuff I hadn't seen before.  But it wasn't long before I realized that this event wasn't really about the stuff.  There was great stuff there, of course.  But this thing was really about people.  Rin Tanaka in his pure and almost naive passion for the vintage scene somehow managed to create a fashion-centric event completely devoid of the usual preening and posturing of the industry.  Plenty of new labels were exhibiting alongside the vintage so it wasn't just that the sheer age of the designs undercut the industry's normally competitive edge.  There were also loads of visitors from competing brands including global chains, high-end niche and mainstream high-street concepts but still the atmosphere was uniquely positive and soulful.  After a while it hit me.  It's Rin himself that needs the credit.  The common denominator for everyone there was that they all knew Rin at some level.  I had met him as I said, but so had Jason and Ali and a bunch of others from our team.  My brother who works at RRL and was co-hosting the event also knew him. Everyone I had any connection to there knew him.  And the hundreds I didn't have a connection to obviously knew him as well.  The quality he celebrates in his copious works on the subject is all about that... -the human connection between the people in our particular network.  People like the ones we met, Shawn Stussy of Stussy fame, Yoshi of The Garage Company, Bob from Vintage Productions, the team from J. Augur, Joeb the belt-customizer, Brit Eaton The Fashion Archeologist, Jason Fischer from Esquivel Shoes, Niall and Spencer and the crew from RRL, Drew from F-as-in-Frank, Shaheen from Feal Mor, Scott from Sante Fe Vintage, Owen the Punk Collector, Yoshihide from Chronicle Works, Mike from Rising Sun, Adriano Goldschmied, Christophe from Mr. Freedom, and Miura from Lightening Magazine.... to name a few.

DEEPER L.A.

The city of L.A. and the garment industry in general can suffer from a reputation for shallowness and superficiality.  But thanks to Rin we all got a chance to enjoy a very different Los Angeles.  A whole bunch of people with their own approach to "worshipping tradition" and "destroying convention" which is just the crowd we like to hangout with here at DENHAM where we've already demonstrated the cheek to coin the phrase.

Worship Tradition, Destroy Convention.

Thanks again to Rin Tanaka.  Until next year.