The Kings have not scored in their past five periods, plus an overtime, and they could drift into their longest losing streak of the season with another loss against Detroit. “I personally don't think Americana is dead,” said the designer, “I just think it's the subject matter that's changing and evolving.The Los Angeles Kings have fallen into their first major rut of the season and the Detroit Red Wings don't figure to offer a helping hand when they visit on Thursday night. It’s still there but it’s being told through a different lens,” says Todd Synder, who recently partnered with Davis to help launch his new L.L.Bean collaboration. “When I looked at the landscape right now, between Loewe, between Virgil, everybody’s still got their finger on Americana. Thankfully, the concept of men’s style has grown into much more of a big tent idea than it was in the ‘00s, even as the through line of Americana remains. “For years it seemed like American guys were the last to appreciate American style.” “ was more about guys discovering something that had been there all along,” remarks Davis. Americana never fully disappeared because, much like America itself, it was always more about infinite reinterpretations of foundational ideas. Of course it’s important to distinguish Americana the trend, which like most trends eventually devolved into parody, from Americana the cultural output and influence, which continues to be felt today in brands like Noah, Aimé Leon Dore, and Pyer Moss. Pieces from the L.L.Bean x Todd Snyder collection, from an Esquire photoshoot for the October/November 2020 issue. “We would be traveling or doing trend reports and we would see people wearing chamois and Bean Boots and great jeans and putting L.L.Bean together in a way that was probably better than what we were doing ourselves,” explains L.L.Bean’s vice president of product creation, Owen Kelly. Purveyor of reliable school backpacks and fly fishing gear, L.L.Bean had been quietly minding its own business in Maine when its jolie laide Bean Boot became an object of online menswear reverence. Red Wing wasn’t the only brand to suddenly find itself in Americana’s spotlight. “We’re certainly not going to change our approach,” he says matter-of-factly. According to Spencer, the brand’s top five sellers are the still the same ones you might remember from a decade ago. But don’t expect a Red Wing-made sneaker any time soon. That means things like last year’s New Balance collaboration or the brand’s popular Weekender Collection of lightweight chukkas and Chelsea boots. “We’ll adapt to a trend when it’s right, but we’ll stay true to our DNA,” he says. “Sneakers have been the big trend,” notes Steve Spencer, head of sales at Red Wing, admitting, “ Iron Rangers are not out-of-the-box comfort.” Spencer points out that Red Wing wasn’t oblivious to the sea change in tastes during the last decade, in fact, the brand has recalibrated itself accordingly. interest, driven in part by pioneering New York retailer Opening Ceremony and designer Todd Snyder (then at J.Crew), to begin grouping its classic styles under the rubric “Red Wing Heritage.”Ī leather cutter at Red Wing, Bill Dankern, with an array of his cutting patterns in 2001. With its blue collar cachet and rugged aesthetic, Red Wing’s white-soled, moc-toe boots enjoyed decades of popularity as fashion footwear in Japan, but it wasn’t until 2007 that the brand saw enough U.S. Perhaps no other brand exemplified the Americana era more than Red Wing. In 2008, the Los Angeles Times announced, “American heritage brands make a comeback,” running a 1930s ad from Red Wing Shoes underneath the headline. But what happened when menswear moved on and the factory visits stopped? Marked by a surge of interest in so-called “heritage” brands, Americana put formerly dusty or overlooked manufacturing stalwarts back on the map for a younger generation and helped lay the foundation for our style, and shopping, savvy present. Wooden Sleepers offered a tightly curated selection of collegiate sweatshirts, Levi’s 501 jeans, and other ne plus ultras of Americana, the menswear style that over a decade ago made the selvedge stripe an aspirational totem before it was overtaken by streetwear. “It’s more interesting to me than dressing head to toe in that urban lumberjack shit.” A vintage buyer and collector, Davis operates Wooden Sleepers, the most recent incarnation of which was a small shop in the Brooklyn waterfront neighborhood of Red Hook. "Can we talk about Nike being a heritage brand?” Brian Davis rhetorically asks.
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