Few clothing brands are as iconic as Evisu. Their jeans are recognized throughout the world. The brand is known for its use use of quality vintage fabric and labour-rich productions techniques. Although still not as big in the western world as in Japan, this designer jeans brand is popular with fashionistas and celebrities alike.
The Evisu brand was created by Japanese connoisseur of denim and jeans Hidehiko Yamane, who considered himself a tailor, not a clothing designer. He would travel the world searching for and demanding the best quality fabrics that jeans could be created from, but soon realized that original, quality denim was extremely hard to find.
In 1988, Yamane-san had a breakthrough when he came across an old 1950s American shuttle loom capable of weaving 40 metres of selvedge denim in a single day. Why couldn’t he use this to create quality selvedge jeans for connoisseurs such as himself? In the days that followed, a cult fashion item was born.
Yamane-san originally named his brand Evis, after the Buddhist god of prosperity. All of his jeans were created from quality American cotton in Osaka, Japan and his own ‘seagull’ logo was painted on each pair. Manufacture though, was laborious and slow and the company was only turning out a dozen pairs of jeans per day.
In the 1990s, Yamane-san’s luck took a turn for the better. The demand for vintage jeans was on the up and the company had to move production to Italy to cope with demand. It seemed that the combination of Italian manufacture and Japanese denim was exactly what the fashion conscious were looking for and Evisu quickly became one of the most in-demand and influential jean brands in the world.
Evisu was one of the first brands to make premium Japanese denim available outside of Japan and is regarded by many to still be one of the best. The jeans are perceived differently in different markets however. In the UK, Evisu Clothing is seen more as a streetwear brand but in Asia, the brand is very popular with collectors. A lot of the jeans that Evisu produce are hand finished, which makes no pair of the jeans exactly the same. The company seems to have done it all since it’s birth 21 years ago. They’ve produced collaborations with Puma and Selfridges, opened a store on Saville Row and even released Evisu fishing and golf ranges.
In the last few years though, competition in vintage denim and jeans has grown viciously, with selvedge denim more readily available and small companies cropping up all over the world. The Evisu brand has perhaps fallen a little out of favour with high-end fashion lovers, but this Japanese icon stays loyal to it’s followers and Evisu lovers around the globe.
The guys at DenimGeek.com buy their Evisu from www.aphrodite1994.com and www.oki-ni.com. You can learn more and keep up with the brand at www.evisu.com/blog.
