Welcome to the New HBL

August 31, 2018

Welcome, visitor, to the new Himel Bros. Leather blog and news section. If you’re new to the brand, thanks for going out of your way to find us. If you’re an old hand, thank you so much for your continued support. We hope we can repay your trust by offering you an array of promotions, discounts, and with the continuation of our industry-leading manufacturing quality.

 

Although our new website has been online for a few months, now, I’d like to consider this moment its official inauguration, as it will now play host to regular writings from David Himel, himself. David hasn’t kept a regular blog presence for a few years, since handing off his “Art of Vintage Leather Jackets” blog to a collaborator back in 2012 (that blog is still online, and its archive is an absolute treasure-trove of information about vintage leather design, manufacturing, and marketing).

 

In order to celebrate David’s nascent return to the blogosphere, I’m going to repost one of his earliest entries from HBL’s prehistory. From the ancient days of 2007, I present:

 

WHY ENDEVOUR TO TRY AND MAKE JACKETS

 

Weird. I was sitting around today thinking about my past in academics and art, and starting to doubt why I am trying to go through this process. Why make clothing? there is clearly no money in it, no style left to create. I went for a walk in the giant outdoor shopping mall that is Queen Street West, and looked at the "vintage inspired" designs that proliferated the shelves from boots and bags to jackets and jeans.

I relived all the design pieces I have sold to xxxxxxxx, xxxxxxxx and all the other companies that have dissected these pieces like Dr. Frankenstein to recreate this re constructivist fashion that proliferates like a Maoist uniform in the retail world. Sometimes it overwhelms me when I see new fashion because after so many years in schmata I see all the little bits and pieces ripped from their offspring, a pocket from this jacket and a collar from that jacket.

What did I learn? Well my thoughts turned to Japan where they continually recreate identical copies, both in style and form of all things vintage (1900 to 1975). IS THERE ROOM FOR ME?

Epiphany: I want to carry on the traditions of those dead and gone Jews who designed with utility and beauty... as though corporatist fashion crapola never appeared and then exported the whole industry to slave labour in Asia. I want to extend the hand of my grandfather and his brothers, picking up where my father left the gap to go on to medicine. Let’s hope this goal is possible and I hope it is lofty as well cause if it is a mediocre desire, I suspect it will end in disappointment.

 

Note: names of other brands have been redacted.

At the risk of rambling, I’d like to reaffirm the Himel Bros. mission: to make sure each and every person can own “One Good Thing.” That means a garment, an object, in which form and function are one—something beautiful because it’s made well, and made well because it’s beautiful.

 

From all of us at Himel Bros., we’d like to thank you again—we make the clothes, but you carved the niche where we reside.

 

Parker

 

Design

HBL

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