Kate Watson

Denim Rush - text

“Snake bite, spider bite, twisted ankle, broken down car, dying of thirst, being shot. Those are the risks,” says Dave White of Ragtop, a London-based vintage clothes outlet. But, still he returns, hooking up with Brit Eaton, one of America’s denim safari pioneers, to track down some seriously vintage denim.

Eaton, an American and White, a Brit, sell vintage clothing on their respective continents, and regularly meet up in America’s dustbowl on missions to unearth unique pieces of old denim for buyers across America, Europe and Japan.

For Eaton and White, these trips mean routing off the highway and away from the beaten track. It means they’re up a mountain and down a mine; nosing around country stores that haven’t seen custom for decades and visiting ghost towns that haven’t hosted for a century. Then, along with that is the matter of convincing desert loners to let them dig through their hoarded miscellanea amassed in old cars, huts and outbuildings.

“Most of them are super-friendly,” says White, “They’ll let you sleep in their bunkhouse, and they’re brilliant. And the other ones are super-crazy, and they’ll shoot you. We met one guy who saw us off his property with a rattlesnake on the end of a pole.”

Old farm buildings and remote mines are hot-spots for antique denim, thanks to the textile's design. Originally created as a strong workwear fabric, denim was the choice of miners and labourers from the nineteenth century on, its expert durability proven by its continued existence. Worn, patched and worn again, these pieces stayed loyal to their owners year after year; when no longer wearable, they were repurposed and reused.  Today, they are mined from their resting places, patched, frayed and threadbare -  the bones of weft and warp clinging to selvage spines. They are often rags, but the patches of wear and the careful mends are imbued with history, hinting at past tales so captivating these vintage fabrics are able to command extraordinary sums of money.

For such extraordinary sums, Eaton and White will go to extraordinary lengths. "The first mine I went down was pretty bloody dangerous," says White. "Unusually, it was a shaft straight down, and it has a huge ladder made of two-by-fours. Eaton went down first on his abseiling rope, and he said, 'It's all right. You should come down on the ladder.' So I climbed into the pit with no rope or any equipment - pretty naive, really. It's dark, you instantly have all those movies in the back of your mind, and obviously then you're thinking, 'Well , actually nobody knows where I am. At all. In the entire world. If something goes wrong, the chances of being rescued are, like, zero.' And...that's kind of a good buzz. Off the mao, no cell reception."

And it's not just being off-grid. “Once Brit was abseiling into a shaft and he didn’t really know what was down there." White continues.  "And I’m looking around and I suddenly came to the conclusion that this was a mountain lion’s den and that it was likely to return at any point. And I’m thinking, 'What the hell am I doing?!'”

Ten years ago, The New York Times granted Eaton the moniker, 'Indiana Jeans' in response to his unusual career choice as a so-called denim archaeologist. So it is intriguing that Eaton has become a worthy adversary for incalculable danger, just like his fraternal film-twin. Eaton impresses  that he plans  his trips carefully, checking ropes, safety  kits and supplies. However, sometimes that's not enough.

“There are the things you cannot possibly calculate happening, like, when you’re standing on solid ground in a mine that’s not solid ground,” Eaton says. “It looked like the floor but was only six inches of material, and below that there was a 200 ft drop. I saw the debris and rock start to funnel down like a sand dial....I saw this little hole opening up...I was three hundred feet down in this mine. I happened to be by the last rung of the ladder and I was able to jump and grab onto the ladder just before, “Whoosh!” the whole floor gave way. Without a doubt, I would have been dead.”

Such huge risks are surely only worth it for significant financial returns, right? Vintage denim remains a growth industry and one that big brands are keen to be on board with. In fact, Eaton and White were the subject of an episode of Red Bull’s Bullit series in 2013 and, this year ‘Denim mining’ was shown in Levis’ The 501 Jean: Stories of an Original documentary. Instagram and eBay are in thrall to vintage finds. And as more discoveries are made, the market burgeons.

Vintage detail is now vital to newer platforms. Eaton's clients include film and TV companies who, thanks to increased commentary across social media networks, are increasingly committed to authenticity in costume design.  Then, on it goes, Eaton and White share their finds with fashion houses, who cut patterns and release pieces inspired by vintage shapes, and subsequently harness new buyers with antique styling.

On top of all that, we’ve heard the stories about the fifty-thousand-dollar-finds too. So, is denim mining really a goldmine?  Eaton is keen to quell rumours of such sales, indicating that treasures like this are seriously once-in-a-lifetime.  Maybe this is because, just like prospectors of old, rumours and stories have inspired the arrival of others on a mission for their ‘denim gold’ and the quiet Spanish towns that Eaton ‘discovered’ are now being tapped by others. Still, he is optimistic. He feels it makes a market. He tells us that vintage clothing’s reliable income and is invariably from 1950’s Levis in a rough condition, which sell for $500 a pair -   though – it is worth noting that, in mint condition, the same style will sell for $5000.

For Eaton and White will always have new places to discover and trips to plan, because these excursions are not just about the big bucks.  When we catch up with Brit, he’s just returned from a trip, and tells us he’s just found a really “rare brand...an 1880’s, one-pocket jean .” He talks rapidly, excitedly and his passion is intoxicating, “It’s addiction. It’s psychological. It’s like a disease... a positive disease. If I don’t go on the road every month I start to jones...to need a fix. It’s not about finding that thing,  it’s that moment of discovery when you get to a really awesome place - an awesome fishing ground if you will  - when you get into an old attic and see the old stuff everywhere you know you’re going to find something. It’s like the anticipation of sex. You know something really good’s going to happen!”

White enthuses further, “Even in the globally connected world that we inhabit these days, America’s so vast: there are these incredible isolated pockets,” he goes on, “It’s the best thing in the world, it’s an adventure, it’s what motivates me to get out there. For some people it would be to climb a mountain or go and see a rare flower. For me, searching for the denim is an excuse to be in the wilderness.”