If you’re into collaborative and novel efforts between clothing companies, you’ll know that sometimes it’s a scattershot. There are some that are yawn-inducing and others are the sort that make so much sense you wonder why it’s not a permanent endeavor. When BEAMS and Levi’s teamed up a while back, their combined effort immediately landed in the latter category, and thankfully we have another collab landing later this week. And if you’re into cozy Americana, it just might be the best yet.
Cozy you ask? Well, this three-headed Cerberus of a collaboration features our two familiar faces but adds an all-new player to the mix: Loopwheeler, a Japanese label specializing in loopwheeled cotton fabric made the way it was a century ago. They do so by knitting fabrics on the “ultra-rare” Tsuriakami machines, which have been churning (slowly, with minimal tension) in Wakayama, Japan since 1920. The product is a super soft, super comfortable, super durable cotton called Tsuriami that feels like the best vintage sweatshirts inside the best vintage stores in the country.
Because it’s made on the low-and-slow setting, however, it’s normally not all that easy to come by. Thanks to BEAMS and Levi’s, however, that’s no longer the case, because the long-standing pals have applied the legendary loopwheeled cotton to some hard-hitting designs: the Super Wide Trucker and Super Wide Pant, and they threw in a bandana for good measure, all of them done in a rich navy and a heather gray.
The Super Wide Pant has a classic five-pocket design with a loose leg, although the Tsuriami fabric makes them drape a bit more like sweats than your average pair of baggy jeans. With the Super Wide Jacket, the trio cooked up a classic trucker in that same fabric—pleats and all—but because of the weight and structure, it has some undeniable cardigan and hoodie DNA in the mix.
Will either sub in for a new pair of jeans or that vintage denim jacket you’ve been watching on eBay for weeks now? Probably not in a 1:1 kind of way, at least, but that’s also not really the point. For those interested, everything will be available for purchase starting October 17 at select BEAMS stores in Japan, and will go global on October 22 at Levi.com and some select Levi’s stores, and finally will hit the BEAMS America site on October 23 if anyone missed out on the prior releases. Because, as mentioned earlier, this fabric isn’t easy to make, curious parties should move quickly.