Jelado

Jelado was founded in 2005 by Yohei Goto, who came to clothing design from an unusual background: he had worked as a vintage-clothing dealer in Tokyo and had also competed as a professional kickboxer before turning his research into old American workwear into a label of his own. Goto's method centers on literally taking apart original vintage garments, primarily American workwear and denim from the 1930s through the 1970s, to study details a visual reference alone wouldn't reveal: cotton fiber length, thread thickness, the number of twists in the yarn, and thread count. He has described sending disassembled deadstock pieces to a national inspection agency for that level of analysis. The results feed into reproductions built on recreated fabrics rather than exact copies for their own sake; Jelado's 'Last Resort' denim, for instance, is a technical recreation based on dismantled original Levi's XX fabric rather than a licensed reissue. The brand frames its output as a modern interpretation of that research rather than straightforward nostalgia, aiming to understand why old garments were constructed the way they were rather than simply imitating their appearance.