Snake America Sixty Two
Snake is a bi-weekly email blast (not lately) covering aftermarket goods, usually on eBay. This week: a WW2 overshirt and a disco boat tee. Subscribe for the experience.
eBay: British indigo overshirt, for sale 29.99 GBP: Overshirts are awesome, man. But they're never done right, and are never live and in person. If you're lucky and hang out in the wrong neighborhoods, you see two a year. If you're unlucky you might never see one outside of the contents within. Good ones can be hardy, cotton and work-inspired. Better ones, like this Harvie & Hudson nightshirt, you can wear when you wake up in a bed and breakfast ... bad ones are like the better ones except cheap. Why would someone need an especially long oxford for a mill or rubber factory? Or for the office? Are these Brooks Brothers Oxfords gone wrong--gone right?--for the obese(1)? It's hard to say that most button-collar shirts since aren't BB Oxfords gone wrong ... the overshirt serves no practical purpose for a working man or woman, except that there is more of it. Is it to make sure WD-40, or treacle, doesn't touch a leg of jeans? Googling "Overshirt, Smock" yields a Pinterest.com page of a man in a workingman's smock, pouring milk from a jug into a smaller one. Pretty dumb move, since olden-time photos take an hour to set and the milk was already spoiled by the time the photo bulb exploded. This seller has been selling Parisian city sweeper smocks, Yves Klein blue, like Bill Cunningham wears, at a brisk pace for a few years. Some come with tags and some don't and he has pants to match. It would be funny if someone wore a tall tee under these.
J.C. Penney "Beach Scene" polo shirt, $19.99 BIN: Only tangentially related to the motion picture Thief (USA 1981), music by Tangerine Dream(2). This is a real piece of trash, 1970s polo with a full disco collar, no buttons. It's identical in design to a series of Motocross and motorcycle shirts produced by the Spruce corporation, from that era. Those shirts had a live-action still covering the shirt's front with similar bottom border and sleeves in another color. They did raglan-sleeved shirts and T-shirts. Supreme later took the design, or made a similar one unaware, with skateboarders and, if I remember right, a BMX rider. This was in 2001. As for this ... I'm not sure if the boat here is a schooner, or an Olympic sailboat. I checked with a couple of sailing aficionado friends and they were stumped. Both asked their dads, who were stumped. My friend Jack Dickey's dad says it might be a sloop rig, early '80s vintage. (1970s boats would have had a blooper sail instead of--alongside?--the spinnaker.) Is is not a schooner. Is it a Gunter boat or a Gaff boat? Maybe it is a sloop.
Here’s the lore on the old Spruces: Mayo Spruce is an old American originally underwear company dating back to the 1950s. (Maybe earlier.) Duke Snider was an early compensated endorser. Its trademark now belongs to a company in Japan. (Spruce might be from Ossining, N.Y., the prison town, as the Japanese company’s lawyer lives there now.) Stella 10 Foot Dallas in Brooklyn has a wall of Peanuts sweatshirts Spruce made in the 1970s, not for sale. The action-scene one-sided full color sweatshirts and T-shirts don't predate the Peanuts gear but both are harder to find. The tag on this Penney polo is hard to date, but per VintageFashionGuild.org, it looks 1970s. But are the boats from after? Are these fake boats? Was Penney's printing disco shirts in the 1980s? What is going on here? Recommended.
Thanks for reading.
Snake
(1) Gone very right?
(2) Truly their best work ... their most contained songs. A lot of the Schnitzler solo stuff is songy, but everything in the Klaus Schulze era and beyond hangs out at around 20 minutes. I think Is the "Thief" (USA 1981) soundtrack peerless? Yeah, sure. My Tan Dream cutoff is Exit. Froese, R.I.P.
Last Snake: Boeing sunglasses, WWII machete (for sale; sold)
Snake Before That: Nike crop top, Versace pillow (relisted; sold)