It’s a widely held belief among industry cognoscenti that Japan produces some of the best jeans on the planet. While this claim is demonstrably hard to prove — though access to premium cottons and vintage looms, not to mention the sheer interest in brands like Kapital and Visvim would suggest the theory isn’t too far off base — the canon of Japanese-made denim is about to get even more stacked with the introduction Levi’s Blue Tab.
The Americana heritage brand is officially doubling down on high-end denim with its latest Blue Tab sub-label, which innovates on Levi’s previous “Made in Japan” and promises a new level of top-tier, fashion-forward, produced-in-Japan apparel, carefully designed under the watchful eye of Paul O’Neill, design director of Levi’s Collection’s, a coalition of special projects that includes the cult garb incepted by Levi’s Vintage Clothing. (This includes, for instance, the recent Bob Dylan jeans.)
The inaugural collection is set to launch internationally later this year — April, for US shoppers — and features a variety of denim-centric styles painstakingly constructed in Japan with proprietary fabrics and archive-inspired fits, including boxy workwear, relaxed selvedge denim, and a purported version of the iconic Type 1 Jean Jacket. According to a GQ interview with O’Neill, the new jean styles, some of which utilize a denim fabric that took a decade to make, will include classic styles like the 501, but also expand on baggier silos, including a billowy new “Marker Loose” jean.
You can expect more information about Levi’s Blue Tab to land soon; in the meantime, the few images floating around from the Levi’s Blue Tab teaser lookbook will have to satiate your appetite for the new Japanese-made denim.
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