Hope you're all looking at the start of a good day, or you're halfway through one now depending on where you live.
I find myself thinking about collecting on a fairly regular basis. I'd love to be a one watch, one jacket kinda guy, but I can't seem to stop poking around and looking for the next version. I enjoy what I have but there's something obviously appealing about the hunt, which I'm sure many of you relate to.
And I think it's made all the more interesting with the notion that there's a certain amount of money to spend and an opportunity cost with each purchase - if you buy this now it means you can't have that other one that you find tomorrow. So for me I do lots and lots of research and examining and thinking about which example I'd like best and inevitably I get sidetracked by something else shiny I need to go investigate over there and then later I come back to the original thing I was looking for and the process continues.
And sometimes it takes a long time, which is okay and really fun, and frustrating, and fun.
If I owned every jacket or watch that I purchased in my head with imaginary money I would literally need a second home to store all of it in. But the hunt is the stuff.
I have to be in Paris at the start of the Olympics for a work project and I'm counting the days until I can get to the Paris Flea Market (Le marché aux puces de Saint-Ouen à Clignancourt) for a good poke around.
So that brings me this - I'm not a vintage jacket or watch guy to own, but I can appreciate the look on other people and I see the appeal - I don't think the deep-V cuts of the 1950s double riders do me any favors on my frame. They're too exaggerated but they look fabulous on some people.
And part of the look is that those jackets have been worn hard - they're scratched and the grain has popped and they just look like they have stories to tell. But so too, a lot of those pieces have been mistreated over the years - they've gotten wet on a consistent basis and left to dry however, they've been involved in motorcycle accidents, people have used them while painting or working in factories or on cars, they've not been babied and it shows. And they've likely never been cleaned or conditioned or hung on proper hangers or anything else we currently do to take care of things today.
I'm guessing that from the 1920s to the end of the 1960s people just had one leather jacket that they wore all the time everywhere - they didn't have a rotation, which brings me to my subject line above...
Will any of us ever wear our new-newish leather jackets enough to turn them proper vintage? Will anything in our closets that we bought unblemished ever look like a 1950s beat-up, well-loved, well-lived in jacket? Will your new Schott, or Lewis Leathers, or Vanson, or 5-Star, or Flathead, or whatever ever show the signs of an ill-spent youth?
And this is particularly true for people with a big rotation of jackets. If you have more than one piece in your closet will you put enough wear into any of them that in 50 years time someone gets excited about a vintage Y'2, or Vanson Octagon, or Schott Double Riders, etc from 2024? Are the good old days gone in that respect?
What do ya'll think?
I find myself thinking about collecting on a fairly regular basis. I'd love to be a one watch, one jacket kinda guy, but I can't seem to stop poking around and looking for the next version. I enjoy what I have but there's something obviously appealing about the hunt, which I'm sure many of you relate to.
And I think it's made all the more interesting with the notion that there's a certain amount of money to spend and an opportunity cost with each purchase - if you buy this now it means you can't have that other one that you find tomorrow. So for me I do lots and lots of research and examining and thinking about which example I'd like best and inevitably I get sidetracked by something else shiny I need to go investigate over there and then later I come back to the original thing I was looking for and the process continues.
And sometimes it takes a long time, which is okay and really fun, and frustrating, and fun.
If I owned every jacket or watch that I purchased in my head with imaginary money I would literally need a second home to store all of it in. But the hunt is the stuff.
I have to be in Paris at the start of the Olympics for a work project and I'm counting the days until I can get to the Paris Flea Market (Le marché aux puces de Saint-Ouen à Clignancourt) for a good poke around.
So that brings me this - I'm not a vintage jacket or watch guy to own, but I can appreciate the look on other people and I see the appeal - I don't think the deep-V cuts of the 1950s double riders do me any favors on my frame. They're too exaggerated but they look fabulous on some people.
And part of the look is that those jackets have been worn hard - they're scratched and the grain has popped and they just look like they have stories to tell. But so too, a lot of those pieces have been mistreated over the years - they've gotten wet on a consistent basis and left to dry however, they've been involved in motorcycle accidents, people have used them while painting or working in factories or on cars, they've not been babied and it shows. And they've likely never been cleaned or conditioned or hung on proper hangers or anything else we currently do to take care of things today.
I'm guessing that from the 1920s to the end of the 1960s people just had one leather jacket that they wore all the time everywhere - they didn't have a rotation, which brings me to my subject line above...
Will any of us ever wear our new-newish leather jackets enough to turn them proper vintage? Will anything in our closets that we bought unblemished ever look like a 1950s beat-up, well-loved, well-lived in jacket? Will your new Schott, or Lewis Leathers, or Vanson, or 5-Star, or Flathead, or whatever ever show the signs of an ill-spent youth?
And this is particularly true for people with a big rotation of jackets. If you have more than one piece in your closet will you put enough wear into any of them that in 50 years time someone gets excited about a vintage Y'2, or Vanson Octagon, or Schott Double Riders, etc from 2024? Are the good old days gone in that respect?
What do ya'll think?