Mister Freedom® “BREEZER” Windbreaker, Cotton/Rayon. Speedsafe mfsc collection, Spring 2010. Made in Japan.
So much for chronology on this blog…
With all the distractions that Sunny California provides, getting to officially introduce a 2010 garment in the middle of summer 2017 should come as no surprise. So there it is, our long-overdue MF® BREEZER, not a moment too soon.
The Spring 2010 “Breezer” Windbreaker was part of a motorcycle-based mfsc story, namely “Speedsafe Clothing For Modern Riders”, an early capsule collection from which our Mulholland Master was to become a classic highlight.
Borrowing its puny moniker from the famous McGregor® “Drizzler”, familiar to all vintage clothing aficionados, the MF® “Breezer” combines several vintage styles of windbreakers, old-school low-tech outdoor fabrics, and military summer flight jacket designs, into a cool sixties-vibe McQueenish jacket.
The expert Sugar Cane fabric mills re-created our version of the famed McGregor® magical windproof fabric, the one that always feels fresh! A double-face textile, one side cotton and one side rayon. The rayon twill side has a slight sheen, while the cotton side is rather ‘flat’. The Breezer is cut cotton side-out, while the rayon twill side is visible from the unlined reverse side, creating pleasant interaction with the skin while performing the Crane, which, if do good, no can defense.
The mfsc BREEZER Windbreaker is designed in California by Mister Freedom® and manufactured in Japan by Sugar Cane Co.
FABRIC: A tightly woven blend of 50% cotton (flat face) and 50% rayon twill (shinny reverse), milled in Japan.
Three color options: Cream, Royal Blue, Black.
Partial lining: NOS woven tartan, red/indigo, 100% cotton.
Note: A fourth version of the Breezer was issued in 100% cotton “midnight” denim twill, indigo warp x black weft, 10 Oz.
SPECS: * Inspired by vintage windproof casual jackets and USN/USMC pilot jacket designs.
* NOS red/indigo tartan partial lining.
* Three patch pockets (including unusual rear panel pocket).
* Concealed chest pocket.
* Tartan-lined snap stand collar and pocket flaps.
* 1950’s-style “Conmatic” metal zipper, with leather pull.
* Diamond-shaped elbow patches, M-421a style.
* Underarm expansion gussets.
* Fancy “Fiocchi” snaps, a-made in a-Italy.
* Woven “MF S/C Speedsafe” woven label.
* Made in Japan. (back in 2010)
SIZING/FIT: The cotton/rayon MF® Breezers are true to size, with a slim silhouette. I wear a Medium, my usual size in mfsc jackets.
Please refer to chart for measurements (unwashed).
CHART
CARE: We recommend DRY CLEANING only for these, at your local professional eco-friendly facility. The Breezer can alternately be delicately hand-washed, cold water/hang-dry, but BEWARE, some lining color bleeding might occur on the Cream version.
Available raw (un-washed) Sizes Small (36)
Medium (38)
Large (40)
X-Large (42)
After scoring a nice assortment of royal blue/sienna/coral selvedge canvas fabrics from a dusty warehouse, we decided to go for a “Skipper” version, for dudes, hodads and barneys.
This one took a little time to complete as the cut/saw process had to be interrupted by a fun silkscreening session. The canvas fabric was originally solid and we decided to print one of the leg panel with an original Polynesia-inspired motif. As with the MF® Shop Tees, we are using water-based ink, so the graphic will gradually fade with wear and water sport activities.
Please note that, although adequate for swimming, these are vintage-style 100% cotton beach trunks and will not dry as fast as modern polyester trunks or spandex speedos.
The Skipper Board Shorts are designed and manufactured in California by Mister Freedom®.
FABRIC: NOS 100% cotton selvedge canvas, about 9 Oz., origin USA. Three color combinations available: a) Royal Blue, with Sienna (or Coral) waist band & pocket. b) Sienna, with Royal Blue waist band & pocket. c) Coral, with Royal Blue waist band & pocket.
SPECS: * Inspired by late 60’s to 1970’s classic swim and surf trunks. * Paracord/eyelet waist closure system. * Contrast Velcro® fly closure. * Fabric selvedge featured on the waistband. * Side pocket with Velcro® closure flap. * Rear concealed pocket. * Poly-cotton contrast stitching.
* Comes with TWO amazing MF® desktop wallpaper options, downloadable for freehere and here. Like, dude, whoa... * Made in USA.
SIZING/FIT: The board shorts are only available raw (unwashed) and are cut to fit the tagged size after an initial cold rinse and line dry. The paracord/eyelet closure system allows for some slight adjustment to the waist for a tighter/looser fit (about ¾ inch play). Please refer to sizing chart for cold soak/line dry measurements. (Please note that further shrinkage may happen with hot soak and heat dryer.)
CHART
CARE:
Machine wash, cold water, hang dry.
Available Raw (unwashed) ONLY Tagged Sizes W28 W30 W32 W34 W36
Retail $99.95
Available from our webstore cheerful Beachwear section, and the MF® Los Angeles brick & mortar store. Email [email protected] or call 323-653-2014 with any questions unanswered above. Thank you for your support.
A rinsed Mister Freedom® Chandail “Saint-Malo” next to a worn/sun-exposed early prototype.
Mister Freedom® Chandail “Saint-Malo”, NOS indigo cotton Fisherman’s rib stitch jersey knit. “Sportsman” catalog, Spring 2017.
Made in USA
Hissez-haut matelots!
Some new nautical adventures and sea shanties from MF® this Spring 2017…
The small iconic harbor of Saint-Malo, was the home town of renown mariner Jacques Cartier, responsible for Céline Dion’s entertaining accent when she speaks French. The port city later became notorious as anchorage for 17th and 18th century corsairs and pirates, guaranteeing the French crown handsome revenues, and local taverns a steady flow of parrot-shouldered flamboyant return customers.
Manufactured nowhere close to Bretagnebut right here in sunny California, the Mister Freedom® indigo chandail is no less Seven-Seas-ready.
After scoring a loot of NOS indigo cotton jersey last year, we decided to turn the fancy fabric into boat-neck seafaring-inspired shirts. For the pattern, we adapted an old favorite, the MF® Boating Jersey. The technical term “Fisherman’s rib stitch” refers to the fabric’s specific weave, displaying a vertical pattern of fine ribs, with somewhat of a ‘waffle’ aspect reminiscent of vintage thermal shirts.
The specific horizontal mechanical stretch combined with fabric shrinkage made manufacturing this garment a tour de force. It took nearly one year of challenging sample-making and pattern-adjusting to get the fit and proportions right.Today, we are quite ecstatic to finally add this little guy to our ever-growing Sportsman catalog.
The MF® Chandail Saint-Malo is quite versatile and can be worn as a single-layer nautical shirt, as a thermal-type undershirt, as a light sweater over a summer-weight button shirt, like a chambray Tonkinoise or Ranger Shirt for instance.
As always with Mister Freedom® garments, this shirt is not available factory distressed. The subtle and attractive heather quality of the deep dark indigo will intensify as the garment fades with normal wear/wash cycles. Check out the photo featuring a rinsed shirt next to a worn/sun-exposed early prototype, for an idea of fading evo.
The MF® Chandail Saint-Malo is designed in California by Mister Freedom®, and manufactured in USA, from American NOS fabric.
FABRIC: New Old Stock 100% cotton “Fisherman’s rib stitch” jersey knit, deep dark indigo blue yarn-dyed, milled in USA. Note: It is the nature of indigo-dyed garments to transfer some of the indigo color to other surfaces, from abrasion. Be aware of potential color crocking when pairing the Chandail Saint-Malo with light color garments.
SPECS: * An original MF® pattern inspired by vintage nautical shirts and traditional French naval jerseys.
* Slim-fitting at first, relaxed fit after mechanical stretch.
* ¾ length sleeves.
* Side slits.
* Extended back tail.
* Concealed ID patch for custom markings, cut from vintage selvedge chambray fabric.
* Contrasting “Sportsman” green inside stitching.
* Made in USA
SIZING/FIT: After an initial cold rinse and heat dry cycle, the MF® Chandail Saint-Malo will fit pretty much like our popular Stanley T-Shirt, but with much more ‘elasticity’. If you are familiar with our Skivvy and Stanley T-Shirts, the Tricot Marin fits like a Skivvy, while the Saint-Malo feels more like the Stanley, due to similar fabric stretch properties.
I wear a Small in Stanley and Skivvy, and usually Medium in mfsc button shirts. I opted for a size Small in the Saint-Malo, with a snug initial fit that loosened-up gradually and rapidly while wearing the shirt. After a day of normal wear, the body expands a few inches in width, minimally in length. If the pattern has been specifically adjusted to avoid an unattractive “boxy” silhouette, a Small in the AM feels somewhat like a Medium in the PM.
This garment is meant to be laundered following each wear. It will shrink to a tighter fit after wash/heat dry, and expand again with wear.
Bottom line, if in-between sizes, or worried about the gradually overly-relaxed fit, we definitely recommend sizing down on the Saint-Malo.
As always, which size will work for you depends on your own aesthetics, body type, preference for ‘vintage’ silhouette or contemporary fit.
Refer to sizing chart for measurements, taken with the item laying flat and not stretched. Do keep in mind the mechanical stretch aforementioned. Think of it as a tube sock without Lycra or Spandex.
CARE: When laundering, we recommend cold wash with eco-friendly detergent, heat dryer. Wash and dry separately to avoid color transfer to light color garments.
Available raw (un-washed) Sizes X-Small
Small
Medium
Large
X-Large
Mister Freedom® “BORO SHORTIES”, antique Japanese textiles.
Up-cycled in USA.
These ties are the shorter version of our Indigo Boro Ties, originally introduced in 2011.
We put together another fresh batch of these shorties this week. They are made from antique textiles loomed in Japan (some over 100 years ago, see original release post here), and hunted down during a recent trip.
These narrow shuttle loom fabrics are of assorted patterns, textures and colors, all one side selvedge and the other side frayed. Their vintage ranges from turn of the century to the 1960′s. A mixture of home spun, cotton, hemp, natural indigo, katazome prints, kasuri weave, plaids, solids… each scarf is pretty much one of a kind.
Although the MF® Boro Shorties all vary from one another, with specific fade/condition/size/repairs/holes/yellowing due to age, we loosely classified them by textile family groups (there are obvious cross-references):
* Boro Shorties Aizume: mostly solid indigoes.
* Boro Shorties Kasuri: fiber-dyed woven patterns.
* Boro Shorties Katazome: resist-paste dyeing.
* Boro Shorties Nihon: Miscellaneous Japanese patterns.
* Boro Shorties Stripes: striped patterns.
* Boro Shorties Checks: Check/plaid patterns.
Wrapped once around the neck with a simple single knot, they’ll work with different outfits, dressed up or down, worn out or tucked inside the shirt, ascot-style, bolo tie-style or á-la J. Depp. We do insist on the ‘rough and rugged’ nature of the kerchiefs, this is not Brooks Bros neckwear. Think “Salaire de la Peur” rather than “The Great Gatsby“.
Our Shorties come with a Mister Freedom® original vintage metal slider, bench-made in our LA atelier. Sliders are all one-of-a-kind, with different shapes and sizes, up-cycled from antique silverware.
“Le Salaire De La Peur” (“The Wages of Fear”, 1953)
Of notice, displayed atop our jovial and debonair friend Rudolph Valentino’s head, is a fine assortment of casquettes “La Deffe” and “Scuttler” caps, currently in stock.
The Mister Freedom® “Boro Shorties” are up-cycled in USA, and made from antique textiles loomed in Japan.
Retail: $129.95 (including MF® vintage slider)
CARE:
Hand washable, cold water, eco-friendly detergent. Line dry.
The condition of some of these fabrics are beyond the wabi-sabi of a little imperfection, and feature fraying, occasional holes, repairs, fragile spots, etc…As the fabric continues to age with wear, your own hand-made repairs will add character.
Mister Freedom® Original ‘Stanley’ Shop Tees Made & Silkscreened in USA
From stitching appliqués or spray-painting hand-cut stenciled motifs on an assortment of vintage bodies in a small garage in the late 1990’s, to silkscreening our own T-shirts (the USA-made Mister Freedom® Stanley) in the heat of our 7161 Beverly sweatshop, playing with original graphics has always been a fun creative hobby for us.
The journey from hand-doodled graphic to final printed garment is not a dull one. We like having things done in a specific way, so we keep the process in-house, running small batches, scheduling frantic printing sessions in between water-sports activities. Save from having the screens burnt in a small Downtown LA specialized workshop, the whole silkscreening operation is handled at the MF® HQ.
Please note that we are definitely not a professional silkscreening service, and we are not claiming any expertise on the subject. Having said that, here are a few random behind-the-scene bits of intel on the Mister Freedom® way to do it:
* We are using a four-screen rotary printing press, custom jerry-rigged to our needs and available work space. No fancy automatic machinery, this single-operator device pumps them out one shirt at a time.
* Mixing our own colors without formulas results in color variations within each batch. We even mix our own color black, to get a ‘vintage’ black when the shirt starts fading.
* The old-school bleed-through effect (the faint negative of the print on the reverse side of the knit) depends on the squeegee pressure, number of passes, fluidity of the ink, weather, and will therefore fluctuates.
* For multi-colored prints, gaps between colors will vary from one batch to another, as we always eyeball screen registration during set-up (quite a lengthy process with four colors). This random off-set registration is also a cool trait of vintage 50’s-60’s logo T-shirts.
* Four color printing requires unleashing the four-headed dragon, our favorite. Everyone runs for cover, and a full workday will produce endless cursing and about a dozen and a half finished shirts, minus the ink spills and mistakes. A four color graphic takes about four times longer to silkscreen than a single color one, a reason why our finer-than-frog-hair “MF Ranch” Tees are like hen’s teeth.
* Just like the rest of our garments, our T-shirts are not distressed with chemical washes. The prints are not artificially aged either. We chose to not digitally alter the original artwork by adding random scratches or rubbed-off areas to stimulate the ‘vintage look’, a mall favorite.
* Our graphics are not generated on Adobe Illustrator, but actually sketched old-school with a pencil and paper, and it is at that initial drawing stage that we try to capture the ‘vintage vibe’. On that note, out of respect for graphic artists, we tend to not cut & paste their artwork on our T-Shirts.
* For a soft-hand print that will gradually chip and fade overtime with repeat washing/drying, we exclusively use water-based ink.
All this makes for the uniqueness of each MF® Stanley Shop Tee. No two shirts are 100% identical.
The base colors of our shirts (Black, Gold, Jungle Green, Deep Sea Blue) are also quite light-sensitive and will fade naturally with repeat sun exposure.
Due to both technical challenges (with water-based ink, silkscreening dark on light is much easier than light on dark), and aesthetic considerations, specific graphics are only available in the color combination released.
The MF® Shop Tees share their specs with the Stanley T-Shirts. Initially released in the summer of 2015, our Stanleys (still available without prints) are made in USA and feature a vintage-style tubular 100% cotton slubby jersey with the MF® original signature flatlock & coverstitch combo construction. Our Skivvy T-Shirt (our heavier gage knit with a Mil-Specs vibe, available in White, Navy Blue, and Sage Green) will remain a solid-only undershirt option.
We are launching a Mister Freedom® Stanley Shop Tees section on the webstore, periodically updated with latest graphics, colors, and stock of freshly-printed batches.
The Stanley Shop Tees are designed in California by Mister Freedom® and manufactured in the USA. All shirts are silkscreened in-house in Los Angeles, CA., USA, featuring all original MF® artwork.
FABRIC: 100% cotton light-weight slubby tubular jersey knit, milled in the USA. This fabric twists and torques. This natural yarn distortion is expected and not a default. COLORS: * Fabulous new colors for 2017 to be announced… * White * Black * Gold (Yellow) * Jungle Green (Olive) * Deep-sea (Blue) * Heather Grey
TEES SPECS: * Original Mister Freedom® “Stanley” pattern, inspired by vintage 1940′s-50′s cotton T-shaped undershirts. * Vintage style ¼ sleeve length (= approx. 6 ½ inches) * Tubular knit (no side seams) * Cover stitch self-fabric neckband. * Normal mechanical stretch and fabric memory. * Combination of flatlock and cover stitch construction, inspired by 1940′s USMC Government issued undershirts. * 100% cotton thread, for natural roping on seams. * Original MF® “The Sportsman” black woven rayon label on neck band.
* Made in USA. PRINT SPECS:
* All original MF® artwork. * Hand silkscreened with water-based ink, for a soft hand and vintage look.
* Silkscreened in small limited batches, each with unique characteristics. * Will fade like a vintage T-shirt. * Printed in USA.
SIZING/FIT: The MF® Stanley Shop Tees come pre-washed (pre-shrunk). The MF® Stanley fits like the MF® Skivvy does, but due to the nature of its stretchy jersey, the Stanley will feel looser. I wear Medium (38) on most MFSC garments, but sized down to a Small for both MF® Stanley and Skivvy, just personal taste. According to your built and silhouette preference, get your normal size or size down for a slimmer/shorter old school fit. This is how we size our garments. Tip: The best way to figure out which Mister Freedom® T-shirt size will work for you is to take your favorite T-shirt (your idea of a perfect fit), lay it flat without wrinkles, measure Chest (from arm pit to arm pit), Shoulder (from top shoulder seam to top shoulder seam), Sleeves (from top shoulder seam to end) and Length (from top of back collar band to bottom hem), and then find a close match in the Stanley size chart. Again, keep in mind that the Stanley’s knit jersey has mechanical stretch. Refer to sizing chart below for Washed/Dried (we use a heat dryer) approximate measurements (measured flat, without pulling/stretching):
CARE: Low-maintenance as a T-Shirt should be, just throw your Stanley Shop Tee in the washer/dryer when needed. Cold water, delicate cycle, minimal eco-friendly detergent. No bleach. Keep colors separate to avoid potential color transfer when doing laundry. Gradual chipping of the ink and natural fading of the printed graphic is expected and considered a normal evolution.
Available rinsed (pre-shrunk) Sizes (Limited sizing available per graphic) Small Medium Large X-Large
Retail: Solid Stanley (no print, all colors, White/Black/Navy/Gold…): $69.95 Shop Tee Stanley (with single or double-screen print, Gypsy/Sig/Rocket/Knuckles/Skipper/Surplus/Treedom…): $89.95
Shop Tee Stanley (with three or four-screen print, MF Ranch): $149.95
