Anyone who’s gone deep down the raw denim rabbit hole has almost certainly come across the name Roy Slaper, the eponymous artisan behind Roy Denim. Slaper started making jeans in his Oakland apartment in the late aughts, and by the early 2010s, he was one of the leading figures in high-end selvedge denim, selling out small runs of his handmade dungarees, rife with vintage detailing, through legendary denim purveyor Self Edge. “I didn’t know anything about anything, I just started buying sewing machines and making jeans,” Slaper recalls.
Not only did he cut and sew each pair of Roy jeans himself, Slaper was also deeply involved with every element that went into them, from developing his own runs of Cone White Oak denim to stamping his own rivets. “If there was one thing I would want Roy to be remembered for, it’s quality, that was the hallmark of the whole thing,” says Slaper, who shuttered his namesake brand in late 2020. These days, aside from helping his longtime friend Tilden Yamamoto set up shop at his Montana atelier—and furnishing him with his last precious rolls of deadstock Cone White Oak selvedge—Slaper is happily retired from the jeans business. Despite this, he offered to do a show and tell with a few of his favorite well-loved pairs.
1. Buaisou Farm indigo-dyed jeans, 2023
“I made these at the Buaisou Farm, a traditional Japanese dye studio and farm which grows and ferments indigo. It’s in rural Tokushima, in the indigo region next to the Yoshino River. They now have a small jeans factory on site and can pretty much deliver on a farm-to-closet type of clothing, like farm-to-table dining. I was there in 2023 for three months, setting up a sewing studio with all the machines from my old Oakland shop, and I lived in an old house near the farm. Quite an experience. The yarns in this denim were traditionally dyed, which was a two-year project on its own, and woven at a denim mill very close by. The denim is 14.5-oz indigo-dyed, which has an iridescent quality, and the sewing threads are hand dyed with crushed indigo stems, which gives them a tan color. I made about seven or eight pairs of these, one for each member of the farm. We did shirts, too, from another Buaisou 9 oz., so it was like our uniform while I was there.”
2. Cone White Oak R01 jeans, 2020
“These are a baggier style of my standard R01 jeans, made from the first loomstate denim that White Oak made for me. It was a heavy denim by Cone standards, about 16 oz. after washing. This pair has all 100% cotton sewing threads and a unique ‘Roy’ chainstitch inside the back pocket lining, which can be seen to be starting a visible fade on the outside of the pocket. There are patches sewn onto the inside pockets from some sentimental artisan-dyed fabrics, and the pockets themselves are made from antique sailcloth salvaged from an old factory in Oakland. It’s difficult to see, but the word ‘custom’ is embroidered in white, next to the ‘Roy’ in red on the pocket inside. This was one of the last pairs I made as I was shutting down… I should have done that little pocket fade thing on some styles before!”
3. Okayama “Leroy Strauss,” 2023
“This pair is made from a 12.5-oz. denim I received from a friend while in Japan. The denim is milled in Okayama, but all I know is it’s from ‘a small mill.’ Very nice stuff. All the sewing threads are stem-dyed, meaning the Kakuo (the dye master) mashed and cooked up bushels of indigo stems to create an off-white that would look good on jeans. We had to unspool and re-cone a huge amount of thread to do this. Each machine takes between two to eight cones, and there are about 15 machines plus various thread sizes, but Kakuo didn’t even blink about it. I knew at that point that I was dealing with kindred spirits.”
4. Pink Line R01 Leroy, 2018
“These are the R01 Leroy from around 2018. The denim is a Cone Mills custom development that had Pima cotton yarns in the weft and pink-line selvedge. It was the second denim that Cone helped me create. The rivets are stamped ‘LSD & CO – SF CA,’ (You know, San Francisco… LSD… I was just trying to be funny.) But I made a rivet stamper and stamped all those rivets myself; it was a whole project. The custom patch art was drawn by the illustrator Florian Bertmer, and the red tab is made from Japanese red chambray. These were sold at Self Edge.”
5. Leroy x Libra Pondus, 2023
“These were also made while I was in Japan, from fabric gifted to me by Isamu of Libra Pondus, and I’ve only worn them a few times. It’s a 14 oz. with nice slubs and a soft Japanese denim feel, as opposed to American Cone, which is much tighter and harder feeling, and a very light pink selvedge line. The buttonhole threads are dyed with logwood natural dye for a traditional black, and the solid steel buttons will oxidize and rust over time. All the sewing threads were hand-dyed using native plants that Isamu cultivates and makes dyes from—he’s truly a master of all clothing construction. The red tab is made from an Iron Heart bandana that just had the perfect color and weight, so it had to lose a corner for the greater good.”
