Himel Brothers Vintage Leather Blog

New Linings: Part 2

David Himel — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 17:34:56 +0000

Well unexpectedly today a package came into the store downstairs. Nice and heavy, I lugged the box up three flights of stairs and opened up my little present. Needless to say given that I am thinking about liners and design a lot due to my little Easter lamb supply, I was super happy when part 2 arrived. Part 2 you ask: yes little Johnny my WW 2 twill reversible camouflage Marine Core cotton party has begun. This fabric used to mean serious money in the vintage world. It was a rare rare day when I might find HBT camo pants from the Asian theater. Maybe they might even have a grenade pouch on the bum. While for most people this brings back old John Wayne movies, or toy soldiers, the recognizable fabric and authentic garments meant serious serious money for the jacket, pants, poncho, tent or coveralls discovered from military collectors. Well, while still war hating and pacifistic most of the time, I am still a little kid around military gear. I was at the Outdoors show recently playing with the real soldiers and their toys and of course thinking about Camo. Now I have my perfect reversible WW 2 camo fabric just sitting here, out of breath, imagining all the things I can make with it. I’ve seen so many brands using this fabric…I somehow feel entitled after spending years hunting for it in raghouses for vintage collectors. I hope to make something worthy of its “heritage”!

Spring Lamb: Easter and Jacket Liners

David Himel — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 11:12:56 +0000

Easter is a time for feasts and celebrating the new season. Its also a time when lambs are brought to market. Part of the natural process of leather making is purchasing the hides of animals seasonally based on when they are brought to market. There is a long standing tradition in North America both for the Grizzly jacket, or Bear Jacket and the sheep lined carcoat. While a Grizzly is not actually made of “Bears” it more refers to the fact the owners were extreme tough guys from the 1930s and looked like tough mofo’s back in the day. I am working on new formulations of buffalo for my upcoming bag designs and picking up liners from my tannery!

The Black Keys: Customer Profiles

David Himel — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 17:52:58 +0000

One of the bonus of what I do is that the people really really into good jackets, vintage jackets seek me out through the web. Until the availability of free blogging I was basically hidden away here in Toronto. With the advent of the blogger platform I have been able to reach out to cool jacket heads all over the planet. One of the coolest I’ve met is Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys. A few months back Dan bought a specialized Avro D Pocket jacket from me to tour in. My good friend Matt at Immogene and Willy introduced us. My global network of new friends keeps expanding! Dan is super cool and while was in town he brought his tourmates including Gus by my warehouse to check out Himel Brothers Jackets and order some new ones. Super cool fun, the best part is that he really knows his shit. Dan brought the Arctic Monkeys by too. Alex and Matt love their Lewis Leathers which is awesome because the owner Derek Harris is a pal and we go way back! They also were a laugh all the way from Sheffield, England, where I spend some of my youth! They hung out for a bit but my jackets were not their style…but the vintage Brooks two tone looked cool. Second best part: reminded me of why I got into the jacket making business which was to make people look cool and not have to wear craptastic jackets! Im learning…hopefully the historical designs will get better.

New Projects New Leather: Pop!!!

David Himel — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 16:47:51 +0000

It is always hard to explain to people what I do over here in my little tiny company. I often get emails from people wondering why my jackets and other items are so expensive or why it takes so long to make a single jacket. I guess part of my job is trying to de-mystify what I do. A lot of people might see that as a crazy thing to do but I want anybody who is interested to see the day to day workings of HBL. Firstly I do almost everything. I run a very tiny shop! I have one other sewer and one cutter. We make each jacket one by one by one. Cutting each carefully matched piece of leather from the skin and assembling every single jacket a piece at a time. I post about this all the time. Well I just got a new shipment of leather in. I search out vegetable tanned top grain shrunk hides from the best tanners on the planet. This shit’s expensive. My hides are running as high as ten dollars a sq. foot. What this means is my leather is like fine wine. It is aged, cured and treated with incredible respect from the most beautiful sourced animals on the planet. This load is from the most respected cordovan tannery in Japan. As far as I know only 3 other jacket makers use this tannery, John Chapman of Goodwear Leather, Tsujimoto of Real McCoys and The Flathead. Perhaps there are others but most importantly for me is that I use the best of the best leathers on the planet and I know my friends in the jacket business feel the same way. This load is for my new secret super special project debuting in the U.S.A. soon. I have also acquired some very interesting liners. These jackets will be super limited edition HBL specials!!!

Packing Up Project 2012: Heading for Decker’s Studio and Boise

David Himel — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 04:23:58 +0000

Well it was a long long journey from Los Angeles and Inspiration all the way to Las Vegas and Project. The days at the show really opened my eyes to the bigger picture of growing a fashion brand and our host Andrew did an amazing job curating. The last day was vaguely ominous as I knew it was near time to pack up. Eric, Caleb and I took a Project limousine for a quick jaunt to one of the other related shows called “Source” . We were looking for new materials and suppliers that could offer up fabrics and materials for our fashion brands hopefully made in America. Sadly that did not work out well except we had an amazing ride with two young fashion bloggers from N.Y.C. who spent the limo ride texting notes via their iphones. Cool and weird for them I am sure! Well the show came to an end and we packed up the booth. Unfortunately after nights of no sleep waiting for 3 hours to get a union truck to lug our stuff out of the building was no great pleasure. Especially since we were very aware that we were going to somehow have to get every thing in our booth back in the van! This time we had one extra person and luggage. Fabian the expert chainstitcher from Junkyardjeans is excellent company but the van was full to bursting. We were in a race to Utah to meet up with world-famous motorcycle sculptor Jeff Decker to return his motorcycle gang cuts and squeeze in some hang time at his studio and restaurant. We were leap frogging with Jeff and his van all day. When we finally pulled into Hippodrome Studios he greeted us with a big smile. Jeff had a van load of rare motorcycle items to show off. Of course Jeff owns his own Himel Bros Jacket and I have my own Decker belt buckle!

I will tell you that I have dreamed of doing this drive from Las Vegas to Boise, Idaho for 10 years. Every month my good friend Eric does this from Idaho to L.A. and back and every year I say I am going to do the drive and come see his store. Well this was my year. Unfortunately for us, we were going to do it in a overpacked van, and due to a snow storm moving in across the desert, we were going to have to stay in a hotel for an extra night in Las Vegas and play some cards. Sad for me really because I knew I wasn’t going to get any sleep for the long beautiful trip the next day. Regardless we hit the road in the early A.M. The storm had passed leaving a light dusting of snow on the desert and I was in for my first real trip across the vast beautiful terrain of American wilderness. I got to visit Decker’s absolutely stunning studio and resto, and managed to make it to Boise in one day of driving to boot. The wildest, fastest road trip across America I think I will ever take!!!

Project Las Vegas: First Day at the Super Bowl

David Himel — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 02:46:08 +0000

The first day at Project started with a bang. I missed my ride over to the show so I had to flag a cab in Vegas. Little did I realise it is illegal to flag a cab in Vegas. Luckily some desperate cabby broke the rules and ferried me over to the Mandalay Bay. Eric (Junkyardjeans) Fabian and Caleb(Enemy to Fashion) already arrived at the show and finished setting up our booth. I walked into the hotel convention and as penance was tasked with acquiring drinks and fruit salad. I did not know that only one resto booth would be open and charging triple normal pricing. So I waited and I waited and I waited and then spent 40 dollars blackmail style on some fruit salad, coffees and a few other sundries. I headed toward the show entrance and KAPOW so many people. Hundreds and hundreds of beautiful people, fashion buyers, owners, designers, aficionados, bloggers, press, models and anybody else you can think of making their ways down the main concourse and heading into the show. When I arrived at the booth the lads informed me Decker was held up and his rare Crocker motorcycle would not make it that day. That was ok, his cuts and Eric’s looked amazing. The pictures say it all. I walked down Main St. as the booth was down the central isle. The show was so cool set up like a N.Y.C. street map with all the best highest end brands setting up million dollar booths. The jewel in the crown was the Wooster booth where fashion curatorial genius Nick Wooster organized collaborative projects with top planetary design genii. Where else would you see Darren Romanelli of DRx hanging out with Brett Viberg, or Maurizio Donadi of LVC with Donwan Harrell of PRPS jeans trying on Himel Brothers jackets and getting opinions from Judy Augur. Basically every person or owner was by to encourage me and my project. Mr. Tsujimoto owner of Real McCoys dropped in to share words of support, and his son Kento tried on my newest model 1910 Canuck Railroad jacket. Our booth was right beside the photo studio so while Fabian of Junkyardjeans was making amazing old time chainstitch biker patches we got to chat up potential buyers and network with the top design minds on the planet while being entertained by models. Project is really really cool. They set up ping pong tables for the attendees…PING PONG! I was completely drained by the end of day one but that just meant making dinner plans and recharging by attending the craziest party hosted by Project and running around having the old school Vegas buffet dinner with some very badass store owners and designers. I probably sound star struck but it is far more than that. I already achieved my goals to find partners to work with in the U.S. but Project was really a bigger step upward. I somehow found myself standing side by side with the designers of every major brand that I used to sell design and inspiration pieces to. LVC, Ben Sherman, Barbour, Woolrich, PRPS, G Star and a million others. I attended parties like a shoe launch at UNDEFEATED and had networking dinners with guys running brands worth millions. In the clothing business showing your face is very important especially if you want to work with collaborative projects down the road. What was really really interesting on top of that were all the teams behind these brands. Every booth was represented by the teams that built the brands and the lines. And what blew my mind the most was not just the incredible level of design at the Wooster Project, but the fact that a whole bunch of these cats were aware of my leather jacket brand micro project and followed my blogging. It freaked me out when people came over to try on jackets and told me they were waiting to see one in person. Awesome!

Project Las Vegas: The Race

David Himel — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 14:22:41 +0000

This year my trip was a marathon of sleeplessness. Los Angeles is truly one of the great cultural cities on the planet. The vibe is completely different then my east coast existence. People seem to have more room to create and more facilities to do it in. Inspiration and the RRL party were incredible but after a week of flu and 3 to 5 hours of sleep a night, I needed one night of catchup. Sunday Rose Bowl flea market is really a 5 am gig so technically I missed all the really good fun. That being said, it was time to put Nancy back on a plane to her other job in Toronto so we needed a good breakfast and some check out time. After a day at the bowl and a sad goodbye it was time to pack up and head down the road for Project Las Vegas. I had never attended a trade show of this scale and had no idea what to expect. Caleb (Enemy to Fashion) and Eric (Junkyardjeans) called me for the emergency pack out. Apparently we had to get from Pasadena to Las Vegas by 6 pm in order to set up for the show. We had three hours to do it in.

The pack up at the Rose Bowl was insane. Between Eric’s stuff from Idaho, Caleb’s from North Carolina and mine from Toronto, all the display stuff and various sundries the van was starting to dangerously overflow. We filled and filled and filled and at some point Eric stopped and pointed out we had to meet up with Jeff Decker, famous motorcycle expert and bronze sculptor, and fit his motorcycle cuts in the back. Well in some sort of unbelievable puzzle like solution every single inch of the V-10 Econoline was filled. There was barely enough room to squeeze our asses into the seats between the sewing machines and gear to the ceiling. It was a miracle. So was the journey completed in 2 hours 47 minutes.

Pulling up to Mandalay Bay at 5:57 PM was exhausting . We arrived happy to make the deadline and feeling overwhelmed by the task ahead of unloading the madly overloaded van and creating a world class booth from scratch. We waited for the union boys to truck the gear into the building and I walked into my first ever Big League trade show. It was incredible. The scale was hard to imagine. We somehow scored a booth on the main entrance aisle of the show beside brands like LVC Clothing, PRPS Jeans, Ben Sherman and a select few other super cool brands. Now it was time to figure out how to construct an amazing display with our van load of “stuff” after most of the other million dollar booth exhibitors had gone home . Luckily Caleb who has years of experience in trade shows from both sides was an expert in these matters. Caleb set up a rough layout with Eric and I ran around digging up bubble wrap and other discarded materials from the Wooster booth to stuff into our bags and boots to make them look good. We had to figure out a way to accomodate Jeff’s rare Crocker motorcycle that he was going to try and bring by. We set up and by 11 pm after a quick hello to Mike Hodis and the lads at Rising Sun who were also there late into the evening, we headed out to find a hotel and a poker room.

Inspiration Vol #3: The Final Day and the RRL Party

David Himel — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 06:41:07 +0000

Day two of Inspiration arrived far too early in the morning. Nancy and I moved hotels to the historic Dolly Vardan in Long Beach in order to save the long drive from downtown L.A. We got to the show unpacked our gear and prepared to meet and greet. I was really impressed with all the vendors and dealers at the show. I chatted up Bob Chatt and Owen about their recent reality t.v. show Combat Cash, and revisited all the best store owners in L.A. Day Two was the day that designers cruised in to visit before heading out to the Rose Bowl to buy vintage design pieces on Sunday and then rush off to Las Vegas to represent their brands at Project clothing show. Everyone in high end menswear dropped in to offer support. Tsujimoto of Real McCoys, John Chapman of Goodwear Leather and I managed to get a picture together. We all share the same ethics and philosophies of how we make real pure and true to the 1930s leather jackets. We also all buy our leather from the same supplier in Japan. I was very honoured that these two jacket makers let me join their ranks as an equal! Kento, who is the next generation of Real McCoys and famous baseballer, tried on my newest model the Canauck 1910 leather railroad jacket! Innis and Sophie came by the booth and when Nancy, Naoko and Sophie started trying on my girls leather jackets the whole room stopped to watch. It was really quite amazing. Right at that time Paul D’Orleans of the most famous motorcycle blog The Vintagent, dropped in to say hello. We have shared links for years without actually meeting each other. However, like everyone else we all waited slack jawed and mezmorized until the ladies ended thier fashion show!!! Blair of General Quarters Store L.A. tried on a Heron. He makes every jacket look good! The most important two goals for my day were to meet Matt from Imogene and Willie and Kiya from Self Edge.

The show began to lull, by 2 in the afternoon everybody was exhausted and dreading the pack out because of the stairs and the single freight elevator. Finally Matt came by. He was one of my first customers and a real supporter of my jackets. What a true Nashvillian gentleman. I was blown away. Finally, at the 11th hour Kiya came by. This was a big moment for me. We shook hands and talked and then pow…just like that Kiya told me he wants to carry my jackets in all three stores. Finally I will be back in Los Angeles. Not just L.A., San Fran, NYC and Nashville and Portland! So HBL will be releasing limited edition jackets in all Self Edges locations pretty soon! Phew my trip was worth the 3000 mile exhaustion run. So now it was pack up and load up Eric’s van for the Rose Bowl flea market the next day and get to the Ralph Lauren RRL party. Well we got packed up and I had to shower up and de-swell my feet at the hotel. RRL was incredible. Jeff Decker was releasing his limited edition custom RLL belt buckles. As we were heading to Project on Sunday with Jeff’s rare motorcycle cuts and likely showing his rare Crocker motorcycle in our booth I really wanted to show my support at the RRL party. Well it was fantastic. Everybody in fashion was there! Nevermind that, RRL hired In and Out Burger to make burgers for everybody!!!

Nancy and I got up late the next day unlike Caleb and Eric who had to be at the Bowl at 5 am. We were parting ways as I was hitting the Rose Bowl flea market which is the biggest most important junk sale on the planet for fashion designers and Nancy had to head back to Toronto for her other job. Well it was an amazing day. The best part was meeting Robert outside in the parking lot to discuss our not so secret boot project that will hopefully be coming to Himel Brothers Online store pretty soon!

Inspiration Vol #3: 2012 The First Day.

David Himel — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 03:47:49 +0000

So we got up bright and early. First day of Inspiration and as I said, I got coughed on flying into L.A. and yet again spent my first 3 days in sun, heat and snot. I hoped it would be gone by the time the first day of the show came and of course there was no chance of that happening. I was puffy and bloated and completely unready to shake hands. Part of my lessons from the last two Inspirations taught me that I need to set goals for the show. My primary goal was to find a store to carry Himel Brothers Leather in Los Angeles. Since Craft Workwear expired, I have been missing my L.A. customers. My second goal was to meet, grill to grill, all the store owners, designers and customers that have been emailing me and reading my blogs, generally being so supportive of my project. So I vowed not to get too distracted by the high school exuberance of hanging out with all my west coast vintage buddies that I never get to see because I live in Toronto.

So we primed the booth and made sure it looked good. Me, Eric and Caleb spent most of the morning poking fun at each other. First thing when I walked into the show Larry Heller was right there, so was Greg Wallraven and my other best vintage friend Rob Medellin. If you look in Rin Tanaka’s book on motorcycle jackets, Rob is Robvintage. These guys were my men back in the day when the internet was brand new. They used to buy my best motorcycle jackets. Needless to say the best brands and vintage guys in the world were at this show. Potential customers bounded through the door to get to the best vintage first. It was Rosebowl weekend so Inspiration is kind of like a Rosebowl warmup with fashion heritage brands thrown into the mix. What is most interesting about the show is that it is a mix of big hitting vintage dealers and super authentic small designers and then the biggest players in the fashion business. Top guys from LVC, Ralph Lauren RRL, Goldschmied, John Chapman and just about anybody else that designs from the underground upwards to the biggest high end brands on the planet. Basically Inspiration is like the first few games of the World Series of cool menswear…you go from here to the Rosebowl and from there to Project Las Vegas. This was my first big step into that light. I will say sick or not, it was a killer day. I hung out with Mike Hodis, and Brett Viberg came down so we could talk boots. The guys from Free and Easy magazine said hello and we went out for dinner. Eric informed me that we were going to Project and we were going to have a booth in the central isle of the show decorated with Jeff Deckers motorcycle cuts and one of his rare motorcycles. Jess Carson owner of Reveille came by to try on one of my jackets. He will be showing Himel jackets in Portland. But the best best best part was that I was being featured in Lightning Magazine’s newest venture Clutch.

Atsushi Matsushima came to visit me in Toronto. I spent several days with him and his team. They were awesome. I showed them every detail of my leather jacket company and I was very honoured to be featured in his new magazine Clutch. The day could not have gone any better so we all celebrated by going out for new age sushi in Long Beach. What a day!

Inspiration 2012: Setting Up at the Queen Mary

David Himel — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 03:46:58 +0000

We finished our day of journeying to Huntington Library and the Griffith Observatory. If you are going to embark on a life changing adventure in Los Angeles, you must visit the observatory to see the city and really get the big picture so you don’t lose yourself in L.A. We headed back to the hotel and after a lovely night of sleep at the Beverly Laurel, we got up at the crack of dawn. I was on a mission to visit every store in Los Angeles that was hip, high end and heritage. This meant a journey to Unionmade in Santa Monica. So on goes the GPS and we hit the highways of Los Angeles. I have to say that driving in Los Angeles is a dream compared to Toronto. Traffic flows smoothly in L.A. and the drivers are super courteous compared to the constant traffic jams of my hometown and the constant assault of maniac drivers. Well Unionmade is right on the way to the beach so first we stopped in for some pictures and a hello and then off to Pallisades Park! Its so cool to visit iconic locations that previously only resonated in the cultural objets d’art of my youth. I was super surprised to see a Canuck flag floating over a tent right on the beach and Nancy guessed that Cirque de Soliel had set up there. As usual she was right! Needless to say we decided to walk the beach which was several kilometers long, and this left us a long way from the car. Then the phone rings and my good friend and booth co-occcupant Eric Schrader of Junkyardjeans gave me an earfull! They were setting up on the Queen Mary and where were we? So bamn, 5 km from the car we scramble off the pier and somehow instantly find a cab and head to the car, get on the highway and race to the ship. The stress was building as we got closer. I always get freaked out at these public events because they are big deals. Its kinda like the first day of school each time. By the time we got to the parking lot of the ship and I parked beside Jeff Decker’s van I started to relax. We hauled ass into the boat and it was hello’s all around. Every L.A. vintage dealer I knew was there and this year everybody was super friendly. Rin was not at the front entrance but his number two and one of my oldest friends in the business Nao Akimoto was there saying hey! We got down to the booth only to realize Eric had set up for us and went back to his hotel. So now it was fun time. I got my camera out so I could take some pictures of everyone setting up and watch the most important people in the vintage business pre-negotiate deals on the very very expensive stuff before the show opened the next day. It is an amazing thing to see the top historical clothing experts haggling over 20 thousand dollar jeans and 3 thousand dollar leather jackets. My good Canadian friend Brett Viberg of Viberg Boots rang me up and he, Nancy and me spent a couple of hours chatting, shaking hands and right over to the samples of the Clutch Magazine promotional issue. No one had seen it and since both Brett and I were in it Nancy wanted to see it immediately! Ok…long long day and we delivered our jackets and decided to head out to the Inspiration opening party. Super cool…the party was in a vintage mall in Long Beach. Oh man, magazine writers, photographers, vintage guys and everybody wanted to say hello and introduce themselves it was a great vibe. After the inspiration party we decided to head out for dinner at a great resto near our hotel and then head over to a “happening” hosted by Davide Berutto at Shelter Half! I wanted to introduce myself to him and chat about his business. Wicked party and beautiful young L.A. hipsters tired us out so back to the hotel to get up early for the first day of Inspiration.