DAWSON DENIM
To celebrate the strides being made in contemporary and sustainable denim, we've decided to give our readers an exclusive online preview of Bradley Quinn's excellent article on Dawson Denim, now available in issue 75 of Selvedge...
Few brands cut through all the geekspeak as eloquently as Dawson Denim, a niche, Brightonbased brand with a fluid vocabulary of raw denim, classic details and sound ethics. Established five years ago by Scott Ogden and Kelly Dawson, the brand quickly gained a cult following among denim heads interested in selvedge denim or traditional workwear. “We started with some vintage workwear aprons dating back to the 1920s,” Scott remembers. “They inspired us to produce goods with an industrial feel.” The aprons fast became a favourite of speciality coffee shops in Brighton, and orders from coffee roasters, retailers and cafes around Britain and abroad soon followed.
“There weren’t any other high-end selvedge denim aprons on the UK market when we started,” says Scott. “The apron’s cut is practical and the quality of our denim, which we buy from Kaihara Mill in Okayama, Japan, makes them as sustainable as they are hard-wearing.” The apron’s eco principles and ethical messages were a hit with retailers offering fair-trade coffee and organic beans, as they echoed the sustainable values the retailers were committed to. “We only use raw selvedge denim from a mill we know well,” Scott explains.“Japanese law makes it compulsory for mills to recycle water and cut down on processing, making the whole procedure much cleaner. Added to that, the craftsmen are paid a competitive wage and their working conditions are excellent.”
The Okayama region of Japan where Scott and Kelly source their materials has a long history tied up in indigo dyeing. From the 17th to the 19th centuries, manual workers in Japan were forced to wear only browns, blues and greys.This historic law effectively lay the foundation for a huge wealth of indigo dyeing and expert craftsmanship to develop in Okayama, and is the reason why many denimheads (perhaps unknowingly) refer to this entire region as the denim capital of the world...
You can read the rest of this article on Dawson Denim by Bradley Quinn in issue 75 of Selvedge magazine, The Endeavours Issue. To read on, follow this link; http://www.selvedge.org/shop/75-endeavour
www.dawsondenim.com
“There weren’t any other high-end selvedge denim aprons on the UK market when we started,” says Scott. “The apron’s cut is practical and the quality of our denim, which we buy from Kaihara Mill in Okayama, Japan, makes them as sustainable as they are hard-wearing.” The apron’s eco principles and ethical messages were a hit with retailers offering fair-trade coffee and organic beans, as they echoed the sustainable values the retailers were committed to. “We only use raw selvedge denim from a mill we know well,” Scott explains.“Japanese law makes it compulsory for mills to recycle water and cut down on processing, making the whole procedure much cleaner. Added to that, the craftsmen are paid a competitive wage and their working conditions are excellent.”
The Okayama region of Japan where Scott and Kelly source their materials has a long history tied up in indigo dyeing. From the 17th to the 19th centuries, manual workers in Japan were forced to wear only browns, blues and greys.This historic law effectively lay the foundation for a huge wealth of indigo dyeing and expert craftsmanship to develop in Okayama, and is the reason why many denimheads (perhaps unknowingly) refer to this entire region as the denim capital of the world...
You can read the rest of this article on Dawson Denim by Bradley Quinn in issue 75 of Selvedge magazine, The Endeavours Issue. To read on, follow this link; http://www.selvedge.org/shop/75-endeavour
www.dawsondenim.com