The Rite Stuff Interview – A Conversation with Bryan Shettig

• Interviews
• By Those That Know
• 24th March 2020
• 7 min read

When we spoke to The Rite Stuff founder Bryan Shettig in March 2020, his young label was already developing a clear identity: meticulously made Japanese garments, rooted in the less familiar details of pre-war American workwear. From Taiwan, Shettig told us how an assignment about a well-dressed dog led him into the heritage scene, why an ill-fitting collection of reproduction shirts inspired him to start a brand, and how a meeting with John Lofgren in Sendai made it possible.

Shettig’s route into heritage clothing began around 2013, when he was working for a magazine and was assigned a story about Menswear Dog, the blog built around a Shiba Inu dressed in its owner’s clothes. The dog’s chambray shirts, Hill-Side scarves and hats caught his eye, as did a line in the owner’s biography about never washing his selvedge jeans. Shettig looked up the unfamiliar term, found Take5 in Taipei and, as he puts it, “started down the rabbit hole”.

A few years later, a colleague returning to the United States asked whether he planned to open a denim, leather and silver shop of his own. He had not seriously considered it, but the suggestion stayed with him. So did a discussion on Superfuture’s Superdenim forum, where somebody proposed made-to-measure work and western shirts in Japanese and American fabrics. The idea appealed, not least because shirts were the one part of the Japanese reproduction wardrobe that Shettig struggled to fit. Trousers, jackets and boots were manageable; shirts tended to be too short in the body, too broad in the shoulders or wrong in the sleeve. Ironically, his best-fitting work shirt was a faux-calico example from Gap. What he wanted was that fit, but with better cloth and construction.

Becoming a one-man maker was tempting but impractical. Learning to sew at production standard, finding larger premises, buying machinery and sourcing every component would have taken years, while making it difficult to grow without changing the very thing customers had bought into. Japanese factories did not respond to his early enquiries; American factories did, but manufacturing there made little sense for a brand based in Taiwan and serving customers on both sides of the Pacific.

The breakthrough came when Shettig remembered that John Lofgren had helped other labels manufacture in Japan. He sent a message and heard back about a week later. A trip to Lofgren’s office in Sendai followed, beginning the production relationship behind The Rite Stuff.

From the outset, Shettig chose to concentrate on work shirts from before the Second World War. The 1940s and ’50s were already well served by brands making accomplished reproductions of 1947 jeans, US Navy chambrays, denim bucket hats and N-1 deck jackets. Shirts answered a personal need and offered more room to say something distinctive. Lofgren’s team reinforced the value of mastering one form before moving between workwear, motorcycle clothing and militaria; a focused range would also allow the pieces to work together.

Researching vintage garments and period catalogues convinced Shettig that the 1920s and ’30s represented a high point in American workwear. In his view, later decades largely maintained, or gradually simplified, the advances in design and fabric quality made before the war, with boots a notable exception. The social history appealed too: the Gilded Age, the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl offered a different imaginative landscape from the militaria and mid-century kitsch that followed.

That research fed directly into the first Heracles. If Shettig could have only one “desert island shirt”, he says, it would be blue chambray with a scalloped yoke in the manner of Big Yank and Milton F. Goodman shirts made by the Reliance Manufacturing Company of Chicago, a design that appeared in the 1910s. In Sendai, he asked for a blue selvedge chambray and Lofgren’s staff turned almost immediately to the right cloth. They chose its darker, one-wash version and the decision was made.

The next iteration refined rather than reinvented the shirt. The body and sleeves were shortened so it would work both tucked and untucked, while red and ecru joined the original indigo. A chinstrap brought it closer to shirts of the 1920s and ’30s, before that detail began disappearing late in the following decade. Three vent holes replaced one at each position, echoing original Big Yank and Reliance designs.

The indigo and red shirts use coated metal cat’s-eye buttons reproduced from 1920s originals; the ecru has deadstock brown mother-of-pearl buttons, red bar tacks and contrasting vent-hole stitching. A garment workers’ tag sits behind the placket, chain-stitch run-off appears at the gussets and selvedge is hidden inside the pockets. It is a dense collection of details, but each belongs to the shirt’s period vocabulary.

The same approach shaped The Rite Stuff’s Loopwheel Tee. Access to one of the remaining factories in Wakayama producing loopwheel fabric made the material an obvious starting point, but Shettig did not want the ultra-heavy jersey often associated with heritage T-shirts. Living in a tropical and subtropical climate made a medium-weight cloth more useful. Since the tee was intended as a garment in its own right rather than an undershirt, it also needed a pocket with character.

Its chevron-shaped V came from a 1920s work shirt, while a vintage 1940s cabana-style sportswear shirt suggested the buttonless flap. Shettig had not seen another maker combine those elements on a T-shirt.

For Shettig, loopwheel knitting matters beyond its tactile appeal. The machines produce tubular fabric slowly and with very little tension, giving the jersey its distinctive hand and weight. Ordering from the factory also helps sustain a vulnerable manufacturing tradition. Workshops and mills continue to close quietly, he notes, pointing to the loss of Cone Mills’ White Oak plant as a warning of what happens when orders disappear.

Small-scale production brings less romantic constraints. Early exposure arrived slowly until Lofgren shared the brand with his Instagram audience. Pricing was harder. The Heracles is a complex shirt made in runs too small to command the cost reductions available to large labels, and Shettig admits that he initially set some prices too low. Correcting them was uncomfortable but necessary for the brand to survive. At the time of our conversation, the first months of the coronavirus pandemic had also slowed or temporarily closed Japanese factories, making production schedules even less predictable.

Taiwan is integral to the story. Shettig moved there after a career in Texas journalism unravelled through successive redundancies. He wanted to remain in print, but the opportunities were disappearing. He had met several people from Taiwan, including the woman who would become his wife, and an offhand suggestion that he apply for work there began to look increasingly sensible. Around the same time, his mother died, his father transferred to Australia and his brother left for school in New Mexico. Taiwan, rather than his earlier dream of Hong Kong, became the new start.

It also placed him in a much richer heritage scene than the ones he had known in Houston or Dallas. By 2014, Taipei already supported stores and makers including Take5, Faith Co, Authentic Union Made, US Country Store, Black Venom and Classic Works, alongside May Club, Red Wing, The Thurs, Levi’s Vintage Clothing, Angelo Leathers, Filson and Jeansda. The scene continued to expand through Mr.old, Dr. Sole, Benny’s Store, Heritage Harbour, Beams, Groovy and Retro Dandy, as well as leather craftspeople such as Heyou Handmade and Tim Leathers.

When we asked what might come after the shirts and T-shirts, Shettig had a sample of an eight-panel newsboy cap in 10oz salt-and-pepper cloth. The pandemic was delaying the buckle needed to finish it, but the idea had already suggested another: perhaps a pair of trousers in the same fabric. It was an appropriately open ending for a brand built by following one precise historical detail into the next.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Follow The Rite Stuff on Instagram at @the_rite_stuff and Bryan at @ritestuff_bryan, or explore The Rite Stuff at Those That Know.