McTavish shapes surfboards guided by a simple premise: a good one isn't disposable. You ride it for years, then pass it on — the idea behind more than sixty years of boards. So when the brand turned its hand to a pair of jeans, the question wasn't how to make them quickly or cheaply. It was how they were made when denim was built to outlast the person who bought it. The answer is selvedge.
DENIM AND SURFING
A quick trip to the beach helps understand why. Through the 1950s and '60s, denim and surf culture grew up alongside each other. Surfers pulled jeans on straight out of the water and wore them until the salt and sun did their thing. Each pair faded into a patina unique to the rhythm of the owner — a worn-in look that came from actual wear. There's a line that captures it from John Booker, a lifelong surfer who spent his career at Levi's: look at the classic Leroy Grannis photos, he says, and everyone at San Onofre or Malibu is wearing Levi's. It was workwear that carried itself equally well off the clock — at home on a blue-collar shift and on the sand. Denim was cheap, comfortable and durable, qualities that counted for a lot when every penny did too.
SELVEDGE EXPLAINED
The jeans in those photos were selvedge. Back then, all denim was. The word is a worn-down version of "self-edge," and it describes how the cloth finishes itself. On a narrow shuttle loom, the weft thread runs back and forth and tucks in at each side, sealing the fabric with a tight, clean border that won't fray. You've probably seen it: roll the cuff and there's a band of stitching, often a single coloured line, down the inside of the seam. Cheaper denim is cut in bulk from one wide bolt, leaving raw edges that have to be overlocked so they don't unravel. Selvedge doesn't need the help — the loom builds the edge in.
The older method is slower and for a long stretch it nearly disappeared. Mills chased speed and volume, faster looms took over and the shuttle looms fell quiet. Selvedge was saved by Japan: from the early 1990s, Japanese mills went back to weaving denim the patient way on vintage shuttle looms, dyeing it by hand, and earned a reputation as some of the finest denim makers anywhere in the process. McTavish's jeans are woven by one of them - Kaihara, a Hiroshima mill with roots in indigo dyeing going back to the 1890s, which today supplies about half the denim made in Japan. The yarn-spinning and the natural-indigo dyeing are handled in-house, the whole run made on those narrow looms.
"I wanted to replicate the jeans worn in the '50s and '60s by California surfers. They were some of the original rebels and outcasts from that era - Bob still has that in him today." - Arran Russell, Mctavish Apparel Designer.
Which creates a loop starting on California's coast, weaving through Japan and passing through New South Wales. The McTavish Classic Denim is made just like the ones at San Onofre were, on the looms that made them. Designer Arran Russell took the cut from a 1967 pair he tracked down in Japan and adapted it into a more modern, unisex fit. It's the same philosophy the brand has carried since Bob started shaping boards: make it properly, and it'll be worth handing on long after the trend has grown, faded and returned.