Snake America Seventy Two
Snake is a montly twice-a-week email newsletter covering after-market sales on eBay. This month--the completed auctions of September. Subscribe for emails.
eBay: Thom Browne sold, $139: Not so much a good item as a good example of a frequent and surprising auction-titling protocol. There are two types of auctions where the title is just the brand name. Those offering military surplus, listed by senior citizens who rely on caps-lock, and those selling luxury goods, like this beach towel. Anecdotal experience has the majority of brand-only-titled luxury auctions being sold out of New York City. Like this guy. Is this incompetence why eBay started its valet service? This guy, if I remember right, had the Thom towel and some Rick Owens and D-Squared summer clothing, each listed as just their brand. Pretty confusing. There's a Rick Owens interview from a few years back where he says late-1980s L.A.'s sex clubs were the only places where he felt the same adrenaline rush he'd get moshing to Black Flag. That the satisfaction he got from seeing Black Flag from the action drove him to these clubs ... he doesn't elaborate about the clubs in the interview. I hate working blue or discussing music here, but the immediate question is what era Flag? It has to be later? I'm not sure the interview is still up ... it's hard set of phrases to search for. "Black Flag" and "Rick Owens" yields, in Google, some empty pinterest pages, a blog post covering Jeremy Scott's Adidas line and a Machine Gun Kelly album on LiveMixtapes.com. The same seller now lists green Browne suspenders, under the above-mentioned title, for $119.
eBay: Type 1 Levi's jean jacket, sold, $1580: I am putting it out there that jean jackets are the only item of vintage clothing in which you need the real thing to not look like a tool. Everything else you can skate by on the reproductions and do the work yourself. Jeans ... sweatshirts ... shoes ... skirts. Who cares? It won't look good right away but it will look fine. On the other hand, any dark jean jacket that isn't at least 60 years old looks like garbage(1). The fade lines on this thing can't be replicated or improved on. Neither can the color, or the buttons. An obese person who wears new jeans every day for months can get a comparable wear pattern to a pre-war pair of buckle-backs. But it would be really hard for anyone, no matter how obese and determined, to get their jean jacket to look like this. It's almost magic. What sort of living did it take to get this Type 1 to where it is now? There's a store in Williamsburg that would sell the Levi retro Type 1s from the 1990s, which go for money, in with their regular garbage jean jackets. You could tell from the strap on the back or the nice pockets or the thicker material. If you go on the right day you can buy it for $80 and sell it for five times that, but I've only seen that happen twice, and not in forever.
Insane stupid Nike football jersey, sold, $50: From early August, a purported Made in the USA grey-and-red-and-white tag Nike football jersey that brings to mind several questions. Is this really made in the USA? Maybe this is a salesman's sample or a printing-press fun shirt? How far is this from the Rodarte jersey? What about those Ralph Lauren Polo Hawaiian shirts with Yu-Gi-Oh on them? The listing says it's a large but the fit, 23.5" chest, is like a generous XL? This is fake, right? The answers to the above are: 1. there's a chance it was made in the USA since the grey/white/red tag, first Bush administration, covers that 2 It's more likely some kid snuck in to the factory and made this as a joke than a salesperson took this on the road thinking this piece of garbage would lead to more sales 3 not enough, I think they ripped off those Fubu jerseys(?) but this is not my wheelhouse 4 I like them 5 As a rule, all fake items fit weird, shoes and clothing, and all grey-white-red tag Nike fits big. So that's of no help. How could this be fake? Investing in the bootleg process to sell a jersey as strange as this seems a half-baked way to make money. How could this be real? Look at the swoosh. Fake, but not recommended.
Patagonia fleece sweatpants, 1970s, unsold? $40: There is a level of clarity one reaches after significant investment in vintage clothing where the collector realizes that they are and have been straddling the line of wearing garbage. The time, money and attention I have been putting in to my wardrobe and have been this whole time an exercise on how best to soak myself in filth. Not actual filth ... but is there a difference between wearing these used fleece pants and sharing a gym locker with someone against one's will? Or sleeping in a storage locker? These are fleece pants older than me and which have been used. Did people wear underwear with their fleece pants--this is scratchy fleece--forty years ago? (These tags are 70s/80s.) Did people wear them for several days in a row? Or did they wear them like Quebec trappers did, for a whole year, only showering on Christmas Eve? Were Patagonia fleece pants in the 70s limited to serious hikers? Guessing so. Man, these are awesome. The reminding voice becomes louder the older and filthier and rarer the vintage clothing is. But the deeper the vintage buyer goes, the more weightless that voice becomes. Buying and wearing used clothing and other people's filth is an exercise in mental quietude. "Focus on your breathing," a Yogic god might say. "Do not think about the adult who sweated profusely in the pants you just bought. Let your thoughts drift in and out. The pants are older than you and have been actively used for most of that time. There is no wrong way to do this. Check it out, I bet he ran in these. Nothing is real, everything is permissible."
Thanks for reading.
Snake
(1) Light jean jackets are a different genus entirely, and recused from criticism.