Get ready to celebrate

The holidays are upon us.



Please make sure you’re dressed appropriately.  And a big Happy Birthday today to Mr. Vintrowear!

Cyber Monday deals for the hipster in your life

Authentic vintage cowboy shirts for a bohemian-friendly price of $15:

Available from our Etsy store and the Vintrowear site.

When the occasion calls for something more formal

Lately we’ve been noticing the awesomeness of the vintage western sports coat, or, blazer if you will.  Like the more formal older brother of the western shirt, it frequently features contrast color and fabric yokes, elbow patches, and all manner of embellishment.  First hand tailored by Nathan Turk, Nudie, and Rodeo Ben in the 1940s, fancy western suit jackets really took off in the 1950s as Nashville and television both had a hand in popularizing the singing cowboy look of Gene Autry and Roy Rogers.  But a western sports coat doesn’t have to coated in sequins and embroidery to look good.  Just those two-toned yokes will broaden a man’s shoulders and sharpen up his mien.  Some fine specimens exist on Etsy.

  

And, as I’m sure you’re well aware, the perfect complement would be a western shirt from Vintrowear.  Purchase with Pay Pal from our Etsy store, or Google Checkout from the Vintrowear site.

New Vintrowear World Headquarters

http://wp.me/pSzc3-rK

If you’ve been wondering why no posts for the last two weeks, it’s because we at Vintrowear have been a little preoccupied.  On Monday, November 21, 2011, we purchased the new location of the Vintrowear World Headquarters!  Renovations have already commenced.

Front office, before demolition:


Demolition begins!

If you’ve been wondering why no posts for the last two weeks, it’s because we at Vintrowear have been a little preoccupied.  On Monday, November 21, 2011, we purchased the new location of the Vintrowear World Headquarters!  Renovations have already commenced.
Front office, before demolition:

Demolition begins!

We are treasured.

Vintrowear has been featured in three, count ‘em, three Etsy treasuries!

• Lucky in Love – A rhapsody in purple, spotlighting one of our classic Ely Cattlemans, this one a perfect plum with magenta stripes.  And you know what the man says, when it comes to luck we make our own!
  

 

• Mod Podge - Featuring our Ben Sherman western style shirt with its iconic Union Jack and Royal Air Force roundel snaps.

• Baby Blue, Like the Colorado Skies - A variation on the theme, “Songs by George Straight,” this treasury includes our two-toned hand-sewn western, a wholesome chambray topped by a cornflower blue print yoke with matching pockets.

And each of these lucky shirts are surrounded by some unique Etsy items of equal aesthetic excellence!

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His chuck wagon is a hotdog stand

They don’t come any more authentic than Orville Davis, a country music singer born and raised in the south, but inexplicably transplanted to the wilds of New York City.  Today’s New York Times features a character sketch of this character who sings and tours with his band The Wild Bunch, but when not warbling a lonely cowboy tune, you can find him at The Bronx Equestrian Center, giving riding lessons and trail rides, and, like as not, mucking out stalls.  The article is accompanied by a short video of Orville in a well-worn denim western shirt, on his horse and singing about our very own Central Park. Here’s Orville crooning “Somewhere There’s a Cowboy,” an anthem for any suit-wearing city man who’s ever wanted to rid off into the sunset:

Says The Times,

His get-up was straight out of the Old West, if not Central Casting: Muddy boots, dark suede chaps over worn jeans, tooled leather belt with brass Indian-head buckle, stitched denim shirt, clasped neckerchief, yellow wrangler’s gloves. He had a trimmed-down Wyatt Earp mustache and goatee, and a small gold hoop in his left ear, and his graying ponytail dangled out from his worn leather cowboy hat.

“I’ve had people up from Manhattan tell me, ‘That’s a nice costume,’ ” Mr. Davis said during his stable chores, which he carries out when customers are scant. “I tell them, ‘It’s not a costume, it’s my working duds.’ ”

Whether on tour or riding through the park, the man is at home in a western shirt.

 

If you want to see more of Orville in his authentic western wear, he hosts an Open Mic at Indian Road Cafe in Inwood (600 W 218th Street at Indian Road) every Monday night at 8pm.

In his own words,“City people like the idea of a cowboy.”

As always, if you want to look the part, the authentic western wear of singing cowboys everywhere can be found at the Vintrowear outposts on Etsy and Vintrowear.com.

Western wardrobe realism in “Hell on Wheels”

The Boston Herald reviews AMC’s new series, “Hell on Wheels,” premiering tonight at 10/9c.  Says Anson Mount, who portrays Cullen Bohannon, the show’s “squint-eyed, cigar-chomping outlaw with a conscience,” on the show’s realistic moral ambiguity:

That’s a form of squeaky-clean Western where the good guys had pressed shirts and the good guys were really, really good and the bad guys were really, real-ly bad. I’m more inter-ested in the Sergio Leone formula where everything was in a gray area.  There is no good and bad in the face of lawlessness. It’s your gut instinct against my gut instinct, and who’s to say what’s right and wrong.

That realism extends to the look and feel as well.  Says “Hell on Wheels” costume designer Wendy Partridge to the Calgary Herald:

We went to great lengths to make everything dirty and grimy. We spent several weeks making things muddy and dirty and putting creases in everything. It’s a huge undertaking.

Also stars Common as Elam Ferguson.  We can’t wait.  If you’re interested in shades of gray, Vintrowear vintage western shirts are for sale via Google Checkout on our Vintrowear site or Pay Pal through our Etsy store.  Available in Smoke, Gunmetal, Storm, or charcoal.
  

Nudie on display

Photo source: GAC via CMHFM

The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum is holding a Nudie Cohn exhibit through November of 2012 called “Silver Threads and Golden Needles: Nudie’s Rodeo Tailors.”

The exhibit traces Nudie’s journey across America from designing burlesque costumes in New York to opening his shop in North Hollywood. Gene Autry, Elton John, Gram Parsons, Elvis Presley, Roy Rogers and Hank Williams are among the  artists who wore Nudie’s designs.

If you’re a fan of fancy westerns, check out the Vintrowear collection.  Purchase via Google Checkout on the Vintrowear site or Pay Pal through our Etsy store.

Etsyology

We’re learning some new skills here at Vintrowear.  Like, we’ve now learned how to make our own Treasuries like the one the Lee two-toned stripey was included in last week!  For your viewing pleasure, we’ve made a few Treasuries of our own:

• Rise, rise from the ashes! – At the end of her 1,000 year life, she ignites, burns fiercely, then rises from the ashes to be reborn anew.
• Maximum Cheer – Be the hostess with the mostest this holiday season, martini in one hand, crab dip in the other. Christmas candle red, wiccan winter green, queens of david blue. From festivus to fortuitous, happy holidays to the max.
• Sunset on the Hudson – Purple variegated wooly goods from the Empire State.

We’ve also learned how to join an Etsy “Team.”  I’m feeling very much like a member of the Party.  Tomorrow I will post my first Team Treasury.  Stay tuned!