Now that my trip has started, and whilst I am finding my bearings in Copenhagen, I wanted to put up a post about Maple Jeans. Before the trip started I was looking around for some protective motorbike clobber for the trip and found things to be sadly lacking in the jeans department. Whilst there is plenty on offer, it all seemed pretty nasty. Non-plused, I gave in and forgot about it until, during some late night research for the trip, I came across a very cool site called Denim Hunters who had very recently done a post on UK brand, Maple Jeans . I slowly swapped from ‘researcher’ to ‘consumer’ as I browsed the Maple Jeans site. The next day I emailed Dave, the founder and owner of Maple Jeans, to express my desire for his product and told him about the upcoming trip I had planned. About an hour later Dave replied to say he had just been on my site and seen the video of my trip through Vietnam. He said he had tried to get his wife to do the same trip with him for their honey moon. My kind of guy. Apparently, she wasn’t sure it was honeymoon material (smart lady) but he said he loved the video, and thought the upcoming trip was exactly the type of thing Maple Jeans would sponsor and he was going to send over a pair of jeans for me to wear for the trip. What a guy.
My pair of Maple Jeans came wrapped with shrinking instructions and a handwritted note from Dave. The Jeans are constructed from 13.5 oz selvage denim (pretty tough and protective in its self) lined with kevlar and included with removable Forcefield CE approved knee and hip armour. Not that any of the protection shows – the stitching has been carefully hidden so the jeans don’t look like ‘technical’ wear. Dave doesn’t take credit for the design of the jeans – he brought in a designer to take care of that. Not just any guy either, he found Satish Tailor, former creative designer at Puma. Satish led the design and development of Puma’s MotoGP race suit and is also a premium denim collector. How Dave managed to find a guy with such a perfect skill set for his requirements I do not know but when he told me he had to remorgage his house to get the business of the ground I believe it. That just seems to be how things work at Maple Jeans – do the job right, no messin. The result is a beautiful, vintage designed, pair of motocycle jeans with all the safety features you need.
I will be wearing my pair in during the trip and will take a few photos as I go to see how they turn out. Their life on the road has been a hard one so far and I doubt it will get any easier. They don’t seem bothered. It seems their intention is to grow old gracefully. : )
I have been running around Copenhagen today meeting up with brands and organising shoots, interviews etc and I will be posting on that very soon. Till then.
I will leave you with a pic of me sporting my Maple Jeans by the Great Belt Bridge on my way to Copenhagen.
