Some Iron Shirts come and go. Here’s the archive.
It’s heavy, it’s tough. Long-lasting and full of character. Each shirt cut and sewn for us in London from our pattern.
Clean profiles packed with functionality. Zero-fuss press studs and plenty of pocket space to stash your bounty, including our famous “bag for life” inside pockets.
A love of the heavy sounds of Lee “Scratch” Perry gave us the ambition several years ago to make the Iron Shirt. If you don’t know the tune you need to search out ‘Disco Devil’. Back then our idea was a bit of a joke but it turns out that we were deadly serious.
The truth is we sent the wrong denim to our supplier to make this shirt. It was time to restock our Selvedge Denim Overshirt but instead of ordering 8oz shirt denim, we ordered the 16oz that we use for our M16 jeans and jackets. Oh heck.
We knew something was up when the factory said that the denim was a bit stiff and that they were having problems getting the finished shirts into our standard bags. 200 shirts arrived in a courier van that was riding low into its suspension. The boxes were very heavy.
The standard press studs that are perfect for our usual 8oz shirt were not suitable for the heavier cloth. Breathe and the shirts popped open. Despite this apparent tragedy we couldn’t help thinking that the shirt was actually really good.
In this business we’ve got used to dealing with problems. After all we started the company just as the Brexit vote happened followed by Covid and the non stop apocalypse that’s followed. Keep calm and carry on making really good stuff is the mantra. It’s worked so far and fingers crossed the good ship HebTroCo will steer a successful course through the stormy sea that is life.
After a tense session with the pliers it turned out that our amazing factory could swap out the press studs for some heavy weight ones. 2,400 press studs later and we have a shirt made to jacket weight and specification, that we never would have dared to do.
Sometimes you’ve just got to put on your Iron Shirt and dance with the disco devil.
Some Iron Shirts come and go. Here’s the archive.