the process
it started with the desire to make what we couldn’t find.
a perfectly fitting jean...
or perhaps more precisely:
to make perfect jeans for our imperfect bodies.
in 2009 we set up shop in Nashville, Tennessee
in a 1950s service station.
we began with the simple hope to sew a perfectly fitting jean for a man and the companion jean for a woman.
it was our vision that this gas station would become a destination for lovers of good denim.
and the name would be imogene + willie.
( an excerpt from “our story” )
“willie and imogene, my maternal grandparents, signify our relationship with all of our grandparents...leo and sally, anthony and hazel, and james h. and gladys.
“imogene + willie honors those eight, as well as our parents and our siblings and their children and our aunts and uncles and cousins and their children that we love like our own.
“and then...our friends and the team at the shop might not be blood-related, but for sure, we all are one. and then we think what we want most for our children when we have them. we want them to experience that indescribable love from our parents, their grandparents - just like we were loved so much by ours.”
there’s something special about your first.
first pair, that is. and in this case,
the very first pair of imogene. and of willie.
we were raised on denim. for me it was growing up in the family
business...where our hands and most things we own have always
been stained blue.
before we officially started imogene + willie, we didn’t know
exactly what our fits would be. but as seasoned collectors and
lovers of good denim, we had a pretty good idea what we hoped to
create. we knew the first fits should be the result of our own
understanding
and deep appreciation of denim history paired with our personal
need to make a jean that we actually wanted to wear. even having
developed a keen eye for a great fitting jean, the task ahead
would be easier said than done.
ultimately, these first two fits would have to be real jeans for real
people. not for trends. not to suit an image or lifestyle. certainly
not to replicate existing formulas within the industry.
our first women’s jean came from carrie’s
personal desire for a truly flattering cut.
there simply wasn’t a jean that was
perfectly fitting and equally flattering -
thus our imogene was born.
simple, honest, and effortlessly feminine, imogene
was named after carrie’s grandmother.
it was a mid rise with a stovepipe leg and slightly
shifted back pocket that mixed 1940s traditions
with more feminine styles from the ’70s.
the design behind this fit - and every women’s fit
since - was intended to encourage the acceptance
and celebration of a woman’s body.
“i want to die with my
blue jeans on.”– Andy Warhol
most jean styles are born out of a fashion trend or
modern innovation. our signature willie cut was
created as a reaction to what wasn’t happening.
for our first men’s fit, matt began by pulling from his
own personal archive of vintage jeans.
he taught himself to sew and set out to develop a fit that drew from
the past, while working to incorporate a modern aesthetic.
it was through trial and error (and after several prototypes) that we
landed on a suitable companion to our women’s imogene.
and thus, willie became our first men’s fit - a mid-rise straight leg
constructed from Cone Mills rigid selvage denim.
make love. make art. make jeans.
those two fits became the basis of who we are...
setting the standards by which we have come to
measure every fit we create
it was there in our shop that we learned what we would become
we knew these fits wouldn’t be perfect for everyone, so we found a way to make them perfect.
in our small shop we would size, fit, and alter each pair per our customers’ needs.
we paid careful attention to varying requests: perhaps a slimmer calf, a lower rise, a less restrictive thigh, or a higher back rise. so when demand grew, we began to expand our offering of fits based on our most frequent requests from those around us.
the people who walk through our doors are not customers - they are our friends, our family, our neighbors...our loved ones.
it has been a beautiful process, and a learning process as well. every fit and every wash is the result of the people who have walked through our doors. imogene + willie will forever be shaped by the people around it.Headline 1
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we began with the simple hope to sew a perfectly
fitting jean for a man and the companion jean
for a woman.
it was our vision that this gas station would
become a destination for lovers of good denim.
and the name would be imogene + willie.
( an excerpt from “our story” )
relationship with all of our grandparents...leo and sally,
anthony and hazel, and james h. and gladys.
and our siblings and their children and our aunts and uncles
and cousins and their children that we love like our own.
blood-related, but for sure, we all are one. and then we think
what we want most for our children when we have them. we
want them to experience that indescribable love from our parents,
their grandparents - just like we were loved so much
by ours.”
