Here's a Kickstarter I Can Actually Support

I tore into the Vanagon vay-cay Kickstarter a couple days ago. But now I've found a Kickstarter that I'll be funding to the tune of $169, and I'd recommend you do the same, even though I already have what they're trying to sell me.

Unlike Brad and Sheena's Big Adventure, the Flint and Tinder American Hoodie easily raised the original $50,000 sought in the original timeframe. In fact, as of this writing they've done just a touch better --- they're up to $1.05 million, more than twenty times their original goal.

The idea behind their Kickstarter is simple: make a hooded sweatshirt here in the United States and make it to last. They intend for the hoodie to last a lifetime, but they back that intention with a solid guarantee: if it wears or tears in the first ten years, you can send it back and they will mend it.

They won't replace it.

They will mend it. Because it isn't a piece of junk made in a moment by machines and/or impoverished children somewhere out of sight where the rivers run black with garbage and the local army actually marches people out of rural villages into sweatshops. It's an item with value that retains value when it's repaired. What a powerful fucking idea.

Some of you know that I'm on a continual mission to buy American-made clothing. New Balance 993 shoes, Allen-Edmonds shoes and belts, Lucky Brand jeans (but you have to check the label, because not all of them are made in the USA), Ike Behar shirts (ditto), Oxxford suits, that sort of stuff. The vast majority of the clothing I own was sewn in the United States or Europe. As a lifestyle decision, it's slightly more expensive than a coke habit. It means repeatedly spending $150 on stuff Wal-Mart will sell you for $10. It means checking tags, calling vendors, returning things when they aren't what you expected. Still, it's what I've chosen to do.

In 2007, I bought two hoodies at Filene's that were made in the US by a company called Ever. They've since gone out of business, which is unfortunate, and kind of hard to understand since Hugh Jackman gave them a ton of publicity by constantly wearing their stuff in public. The hoodies were about $150 each. One of them was a kind of mousy grey. For slightly more than 18 months I wore it nine hours a day at Honda's Marysville plant, where I was kind of a jack-of-all-trades, final-tier technical fellow. I spilled oil, grease, soda, blood, and who knows what else on it. I wore it underneath race cars and in 20-degree temperatures. I fell down a set of stairs wearing it. You get the idea.

Eventually, the sleeves wore through the first layer of the elbows (it, amazingly enough, was a two-layer sweatshirt) and it was time to do something. My first impulse was to throw it away, but after some thought I bought some flannel patches and had them sewn on. Now, six years after I bought it, the Ever hoodie is still trucking along. It's mate, which is in an obnoxious shade of mint green, doesn't get as much use. It still looks brand new.

It's nice to have something that I've worn out, and worn into, like that hoodie. In theory, I don't need to participate in this new Kickstarter, since I can't imagine wearing through both of my existing Evers in any reasonable length of time. But I believe in the product and the mission so I'm ordering two more, for $169. (A single hoodie is $89.) You should, too. And if you don't want to wait for the Kickstarter and you want your own USA-made hoodie, try these guys.

I'm encouraged at the idea that over a million dollars' worth of hoodies have been spoken for so far. It puts the lie to the bullshit we're told by clothing retailers and their apologists regarding the "inevitable" nature of overseas production. It is not inevitable. This country is stronger when we make, and purchase, high-quality products right here in the United States instead of outsourcing sweatshop misery to Thailand and elsewhere. Who knows. Maybe if the American hoodies are successful, we'll eventually make more complex things. Perhaps one day you'll be able to buy an American-made smartphone instead of something that is "DESIGNED IN CALIFORNIA/built in china ssshhhhh". Wouldn't that be nice?

Edited to note that it's actually too late to buy the damn things through Kickstarter... the website makes you think you can do it but there's no way to actually place the order. So you, and I, will have to wait until they're available through the regular website --- jb