During the President’s State of the Union, one thing he said stuck with me, “We need to export more goods.” We do. The situation highlighted in USA Today isn’t just a problem in North Carolina’s textile mills. It’s a nationwide epidemic. By supporting local agriculture, small, local businesses, and American-made goods, we’re using our buying power to keep our country relevant. Period. Read this article, and Keep America Weird.

This massive vintage drawer acts as a divider and penny candy dispenser.

The Liptons stock their kitchen and market with organic produce, poultry, and flowers from their farm in nearby Augusta, Missouri and they support other local farmers — “partners,” as they refer to them — stocking and using their products as well.

With his laid back demeanor, Winslow’s employee Brody rocks out at the register.

Why the name Winslow’s? “When I was a kid, art always spoke to me. It was the one thing that always got my attention,” says [Mrs.] Lipton. “Winslow Homer (19th century artist) was one of my earliest memories. When this came about, it is that historical connection and trying to put a face on the time when a general store would have served its community and provided the old, the young, the sewers, the bakers with essential goods—and a little bit of folly. It was that connection that allowed me to come up with a name and a visual to go back to. It’s a reference point for me.” [c/o St. Louis Commerce Magazine].

With wines under thirty dollars, vintage and vintage-inspired toys, organic and natural cleaning products, and a plethora of cookbooks and utilitarian kitchen supplies, their general store offer something for everyone.

These rosemary lemon sugar cookies are addictive. Initially, I bought two, then four, and I walked out with half-a-dozen. When I gave my compliments to the cook, she assured me that the dough is always in-house. “Just ask. Eight minutes and you’ll have fresh cookies.” I can assure you I have eight minutes a day to devote to them. If rosemary lemon cookies were a religion, I’d be their high priest.

I’ve been for breakfast and lunch, and I assume a dinner date of brisket or one of their hearty entrees is in my future.

On your next visit to St. Louis, be sure to bring something from Winslow’s home to your house.

Winslow’s Home
7213 Delmar Blvd.
St. Louis, MO 63130
(314) 725-7559

#For additional photos of my visit, see Flickr.

That’s more-or-less how the conversation began on Christmas Eve of last year when I called Ryan Plett, creator and moderator of the Denim Debate.

Build Kansas City

“Ryan,” I said, mining every bit of composure. “They’re making selvage denim right here in the good ol’ US of A.”
[Silence.]
“Ryan?”
“Is it any good?”
“… yeah. I mean. It’s a nice entrée into the world of raw denim, a very democratic fit, and it’s reasonably priced.”
“Do they want in[to the Debate]?”
“I’ll ask.”

My entire family is from Kansas City. For their first date, my parents went to a Royals game. After being born in a small town in Southeastern Kansas, the first place my parents took me was to see the Christmas lights on the Country Club Plaza, and they have maintained the tradition for the better part of my 29 years. So you can imagine my surprise when, this year, I spotted a shop with a giant Vally Forge American flag flying behind a bunch of plaid-clad mannequins. Amidst the mall-worthy corporate-run brick-and-mortars, indie darling Standard Style has become the town’s mecca for the latest and greatest in men’s and women’s clothing.

In its seventh year, Standard Style is going strong, integrating fresh new products into an already exciting buy. Their Plaza location consists of 4,200 square feet — which includes the company’s office space. While many small, independent store owners would consider this a retail coup, to the folks at SS, that’s just their B-Team.

The front door at 5076 W 119th St. Standard Style’s outpost in Leawood, Kansas

Their A Location is the 3,500 sqaure feet of a former coffee shop they first opened in the suburb of Leawood in 2003. Newly renovated, the space is primed for co-owner Matt Baldwin’s enthusiastic roll-out of American classics for the modern man and his pet project, Baldwin Denim.

“Dude literally loaded up a truck bed with old barn wood and traded us a twenty for it.”
“One man’s trash…” I said.
“Exactly.”

Matt Baldwin sounds like he spent his entire life shredding in SoCal, but he’s from a town about three and a half hours away from Kansas City.

“‘TA Town!? How do you know Wichita?”
“I was born just outside there… in Newton.”
“No way. Small world, dude.”

The accent isn’t for no reason. Mr. Baldwin, a graduate of California’s FIDM, and his wonderful wife, Emily spent time in Colorado working as part-time ski bums and in Los Angeles working as full-time designers, before they decided they wanted to raise their kids around their family.

“She’s from Springfield [MO], and I’m from Wichita [KS]. Kansas City is affordable, it’s big enough that we held onto some of Los Angeles’ metropolitan sensibilities, and we were close enough to Grandma and Grandpa.”

He also mentioned that Kansas City is home to some of the world’s best barbeque and one of its most storied denim brands, Lee.

There was a problem in the store the other day.

“A well-dressed guy came in complaining that the Baldwin Denim he bought didn’t fit. I asked him which pair he bought, and it was totally the wrong pair for his body-type.”

Needless to say, that week, Baldwin’s staff had two three-hour Denim Sessions. “There’s a fifty page glossary of denim.” I can imagine the pop quizzes he must hand out.

And what of the jeans? With a signature white rivet on the back pocket, triplestitched yoke (Just like the Lee 101b Cowboy Jean), They’re terrific. He knows fits, he works hard to improve each style before releasing it to the public, and he’s passionate about each style. “At a concert the other night, I looked out at the crowd and saw all these white rivets jumping up and down. It was overwhelming.” Baldwin has converted the men of Kansas City. Next stop: the world.

He can read my face. He knows I don’t like the size of the back pocket on the Reed, a pair he was kind enough to give me. “You’ve got to try the 77, you’ll love the fit. I know you don’t like the drop pocket, but the 77s will fit you perfectly.” He’s quick to remind me, “That free pair? Those are limited edition. You can’t get that denim from Cone any more.”

He talks with such authority, referencing denim mills and factories like everyone the world over knows what he’s talking about. But, again, he can read me. He knows I know.

Not too long ago, an out-of-place gentleman sauntered into their Plaza location. “Excuse me, but do you accept railroad papers?”

“Railroad papers?”

“For Red Wing Boots.”

“… Sure.”

Railroad papers act like a claim check that Red Wing issues to the men who work the railroads, the mines, and the mills of this country. The gentleman left with a pair boots that were originally released only in Japan only, a pair of black 875s.

Even railers have good taste.

Because of the tourist appeal, their Plaza location draws folks from all walks of life.

It was so much fun to sit there, on a sun-soaked Sunday in December and observe such a varied cross-section of America co-mingling amongst clothes that anyone could wear.

Seven years in, Standard Style has established itself, a True Standard.

Most photos c/o Ryan Strong.

The man whom Philadelphia Magazine called, in the same breath, a Legend and a Mad Man, had some very inspired things to say.
“The new luxury is knowing where the stuff comes from and knowing that the person who made it got paid,” Grasse says. “That is the new luxury. Not the fancy packaging, or the glam, but the ethics of it, the sustainability and goodness of it.”

In addition to the fantastic profile in Philadelphia Magazine, Mr. Grasse was recently interviewed by Printeresting’s Jason Urban, where his opinions were more transparent.

“AITA is a reaction against the Walmartization of the world. Cheap shit from China is killing us. This is why we make soap, preserves, and small batch organically certified liquor… There is an art to living. If you live in a McMansion and spend your days at a strip mall buying cheap shit from China, dude, you have lost your fucking aura.”

In November, I had the opportunity to visit the store with Joe Gannon, and while we just missed an in-store performance by one of my favorite bands, White Denim, we were there in time for a tasting of Grasse’s most recent project, Root Liquer, a delicious organic, root-beer-flavored liquer made by a California distillery exclusively for AITA. There was even some artwork on display from Billykirk’s Kirk Bray. The store is very well laid out, and it showcases a well-thought-out curation of products, many of which are of their own creation.

If you haven’t yet, read the two profiles of Mr. Grasse. They explain his brilliance better than I ever could. For more of his worthwhile insight, follow Mr. Grasse on Twitter, @StevenGrasse.

For more Art in the Age, see their channel on YouTube.

It was brought to my attention that George W. Bush, the 43rd President of the United States, was recently measured for a pair of boots at the 2010 Safari Club International Convention in Reno, Nevada.

George W. Bush with the Russell Team. L to R: Joe Gonyo, Doug Herge, and Richard Sanders.

After Doug Herge, the same man who measured my feet when I visited Russell’s headquarters last year, squatted to take the measurements of the former president’s feet, W. walked away with a pair of Russell Signature South 40 Birdshooters.

A fine choice, by anyone’s standards.

Thanks, Mr. Gannon, for the head’s up.

To pay the bills, she works as a server at Vinegar Hill House in Brooklyn where she also made the wine-list covers.

After apprenticing with leather maven Barbara Shaum and the custom bootery — and my Mecca — E. Vogel, she cut her teeth making bags for Melissa Howard’s wonderful East Village shop Stock Vintage and booties for women’s store Lyell.

What I like most about her unadorned handiwork is, as Emil Corsillo of The Hill-Side put it once, “It’s an analog fix to a digital problem.” Sometimes, taking a step back is the best way to charge ahead.

“Prices range from $95 to $125 for belts; $275 and up for bags; and $375 to $425 for sandals and shoes. Seeing how things are made — stitch by stitch by two hands — it seems worth the wait.” After speaking with Doug Herge at Russell Moccasin yesterday, who is quoting a 16 week turnaround for his boots right now, two weeks sounds like a breeze.

If you have the means, support this local artisan. Her craft is truly inspiring. It’s honest, clean work, and she’s earned every dollar.

All photos c/o Alya Kazakevich and John von Pamer

When Mr. Tiller and his partner Derek Galkin of Seavees approached Gitman’s Chris Olberding to develop a bleeding madras fabric for a shoe collaboration, the idea flew.

“We focused on these two fabrics because we liked the repeat in the plaid, and the colors really pop on a pair of shoes.”

With the remaining fabric, Chris Olberding has chosen to re-issue, for the first time in the popular Vintage fit, a pop-over. “Even though Gitman has made a pop-over since 1978, it hasn’t been produced for years,” Olberding said today. He mentioned plans to offer the pop-over as a seasonal model for Gitman Vintage from SS11 on.

Collaborations abound in the menswear business, but this one makes a lot of sense. Seeing how excited two of the men behind the collaborations became as they talked about the composition of their fabrications,  I can understand why this marriage of shirt and shoe maker happened. Of course, I can understand. They’re two guys really excited about a summer-weight plaid fabric. What of other collaborations for the Gitman Bros.? Coy, Mr. Olberding replied, “We’re doing everything we can to give our customer exactly what she — I mean — he wants.”

Imagine it. Gitman… Sisters?

The service provides a new box, two mitts, a new set of trees, which nearly makes up for the $145.00 repair fee.

While it was hard to go without them for a month, the shoes came back better than I could have expected. The exterior leather has that nicely worn patina of an old, beat-up pair. The sole and guts of the shoe shine like they are brand new.

# For an interesting take on the history and social implications of the tassel loafer, read this 1993 article from The New York Times.
# For the most fantastic documentation of the factory, watch this video put together by Epaulet co-owner Michael Kuhle and documentary filmmaker and animator Tom Eaton. It features a real American hero, and one of my personal heroes, lifelong road warrior and master storyteller, Mr. Floyd Gilmore.
# For additional photos of the shoes, including one that shows off some pretty nasty gashes (seriously, it looks like I take a cattle prod to them every once in a while) see Flickr.

NB: I apologize that the “before” photos languish somewhere in the vast wastelands that my external hard drives have become. If found, I promise to update this post in due course.

NB: In the first photo, I’m wearing the 3sixteen ST-100X, which are made in the US with raw indigo selvedge. They’re my contribution to the Denim Debate, a must-read.

It is possible, and in this day and age, in fact, quite necessary for everyone — truly everyone — to approach business from the most personal place possible. The Spades’ successes are a living testament to that fact.

Highlights from the article include:

“‘The bigger you get, the smaller you act.’ By which [Mr. Spade] means: The more personal a brand, the more stuff it can sell.”

“If you look at everything that was going on in fashion at that time,” Andy says now, “there was not a voice that just said hi or hello. There just wasn’t a lot out there that looked real. But there’s something great about suburbia. There’s something great about innocence. A Peter Pan collar is sexier than a bustier.”

On working with his spouse: “I remember this one horrible fight over whether a pink was the right pink,” Andy says. “Ugh. And then it was important for everyone to think we were so happy all the time.”

“It’s possible that all this works because Andy Spade comes by it so naturally: The brand he built is an honest version of himself, of who he is and also of who he aspires to become.”

“Someone once told me that if you ask a woman What is the favorite thing in your closet?, she’ll pull out her newest dress,” says [J. Crew's creative director] Jenna Lyons. “If you ask a man, he’ll pull out some tattered old thing he’s had forever. That’s the big difference. And that’s what Andy gets.” Essentially, he understands that men are happy to have their shoes resoled again and again, and that they’d like to buy shoes that deserve it.

In regards to letting go of their company, Mr. Spade said, “… the game for us? We just wanted to be in fourth place. We just wanted a good little company.”

“You know,” [Mr. Spade] says, “I was just thinking about this time that Katie defended me. It was so hard working together, it was so exhausting. And then one day we were in this meeting with the Neiman Marcus execs who owned the majority of our company, and someone had a copy of a magazine that had a write-up of Paperboys, which was the first film I produced at Jack Spade. He pushed it across the table and said, “Is this what you’re spending money on?” I couldn’t even talk. I was totally freaked out. And then Katie just totally went to the mat for me. She was like, ‘This is what makes us relevant.’ ” He flushes pink at the memory.

Again, the key to the entire piece is “‘The bigger you get, the smaller you act.’ By which [Mr. Spade] means: The more personal a brand, the more stuff it can sell.”

Special thanks to New York Magazine for this terrific read.