"How it feels, to the touch. Someone had suggested I talk to this couple in Nagoya. They had an atelier there, above a little warehouse on the outskirts of a place called Ichinomiya. I can tell you that because they’re no longer there. They were making jeans there, in deadstock fabric from a mill in Okayama. Depending on the length of the roll, they might get three pairs of jeans, they might get twenty, and once the roll was gone, it was gone. I’d heard they’d also been buying canvas from that same mill, Sixties stuff. I wanted to see it and, if it was good, talk them into selling me a few rolls. They’d tried it for jeans, but it was too heavy. They were lovely people. There were stacks of samples of their jeans. Old photographs of American men in workwear. All of their machines were vintage, except the one they used for riveting. They had a German Union Special chain-stitching machine. A 1920s belt-loop machine." She smiled. "Designers become machine nerds. Machines define what you can do. That and finding the right operators for them." She added sugar to her black coffee, stirred it. "So I’m up in the loft, very top of the building, where they had these rolls of canvas, on shelves, lots of them. They’re all different, the light’s not great, and I realize I’m not alone. The Japanese couple are downstairs, on the second floor, making jeans, and they haven’t said anything about anyone else being there. I can hear the machines they’re using. Below them, there’s a place that makes cardboard cartons. They have machines too, a sort of distant thumping undertone. But I can hear a woman singing, like she’s singing to herself. Not loud. But close. From toward the back of the building. Up in the loft, with me. The jeans people haven’t said anything about anybody else, but they barely speak English. Absolute focus on their work. They make two or three pairs a day, just the two of them. Self-taught. So I put the roll I’m looking at back on the shelf. Old metal shelves, about four feet deep, and I follow the sound of her singing." She took a sip of her coffee. "And at the very back of the loft, there’s light, good light, over a table. Actually it’s a hollow-core door, on a couple of big cardboard cartons. She’s working on a pattern. Big sheets of tissue, pencils. Singing. Black jeans, a black T-shirt, and one of those jackets you’re wearing. She looks up, sees me, stops singing. Dark hair, but she’s not Japanese. Sorry, I say, I didn’t know anyone was here. That’s okay, she says, American accent. Asks me who I am. I tell her, and tell her I’m there to look at canvas. What for? Shoes, I tell her. Are you a designer? Yes, I say, and show her the ones I’m wearing. Which are my shoes, from the first season, cowhide, from the Horween factory, Chicago, big white vulcanization, like deck shoes, but really they’re like the very first skate shoes, the ones the first Vans took off from. And she smiles at me, and steps out from behind the table, so I can see she’s wearing them, the same shoes, my shoes, but in the black. And she tells me her name."