jordanleekspin

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Remember browsing the Superfuture board looking for raw denim recommendations? Outside of the A.P.C. fan-fiction that seemed to populate every thread and before there were more Japanese denim brands available in-stores than you could poke a stick at... 45R continually popped up in every thread as the end of the line: the best pair of jeans your money could buy.

Now that the fanfare over blue jeans has subsided, and the normcore wave has crashed on the shore into a smattering of other cores that we don’t care about at all, there’s little to no press about 45R to be found. Yet Yasumi Inoue has been doing the same thing this whole time (since she started in 1977): making fucking awesome clothing. 

Canberra, Australia’s capital city, is often touted as city living with country benefits. Perhaps that’s what draws me into 45R’s aesthetic so: there’s an undeniable metropolitan aspect matched to something you’d find beaten and battered on a fisherman hauling line in the contested waters of the South China Sea. This fit here has it all: the cozy fleece that would surely serve a practical purpose out in the bush; or in my case, the outback after the sun goes down-- perfectly colour matched all the way through with the subtle colour palette that you can find running through every single one of 45R’s collections. Their stores are like little temples or sanctuaries on busy shopping streets (the Marais store in Paris, especially so)-- where i’m served tea while ogling at speckled tweed.

And, after it all... the denim is still top of the line.

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Beams Plus & Harris Tweed c. 2014

Spent the whole winter wearing tweed, really-- and now, just as it’s coming to a close here, i’ve managed to pick up one of these jackets (albeit in the other colourway, so this image does nothing to showcase the parcel currently en route).

I can remember where my recent infatuation with the classic fabric started. I was in Scotland over the Christmas and New Year period in the winter of 2019/2020 and caught the train up from London to Edinburgh. Seated across from me sipping on a Starbucks latte and eating a Waitrose sandwich with a Cadbury chocolate bar was this strawberry-blonde haired man in a Harris Tweed coat. He’d layered his coat over a green v-neck sweater and a button down, a classic university look for those students in your philosophy tutorials that never, ever shut the fuck up. 

Yet, unfortunately for me, something about him just piqued my interest: it didn’t have to be that coat, but I wanted a Harris Tweed coat that same day. It was a voracious hunger that he’d awoken in me. I should have told him but fuck... he looked good. I spent the next four days in Edinburgh going to every single listed vintage store; some of them more than once in case I missed something. Nothing. I hopped on the train to Glasgow, spent a day there doing the same thing until eventually the jacket I had been looking for was brought down from a ceiling hanger, covered in dust, and described in detail to me by the shop attendant who’d worked on the Isle of Harris in the 70′s. You just can’t make this shit up.

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Fond memories of the dirtiest house on Canberra’s busiest avenue... 

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Thinking...

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Spring/summer 2020, Poche

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There’s always tomorrow I guess...

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The Mourning Forest, Naomi Kawase, 2007

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Yves Klein’s underwear c/o Ken Kagami

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Sheep in wolf’s clothing

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Thin-skinned calcium sipper

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Quite the super fan waiting outside the first show of the Weeping Choir tour in Kassel, last month in Germany. 

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Put together the front & back cover for the new Earache LP, “Last”, out now through Lacklustre Records & Black Wire. Utilised shots from Tim’s beautiful Super 8 video for them, “Voices”.

You can listen/purchase the LP here: https://lacklustrerecords.bandcamp.com/album/last