Is Gustin still a good deal?

Stinky is indeed making belts and I do as well. I'm not sure what Stinky's experience with Gustin belts has been so I'll only speak for myself.

I gave the Gustin belts a shot. Saddle tan roller belt with a black buckle. The leather was and is fine but has developed puffy spots as it wears. Not a crisis, just not great. The beeswax burnished edges were halfway there, meaning I think they were burnished but not to the level I like. The edges look like they weren't beveled before burnishing. It's possible that Gustin was trying to mimic a raw edge look with the durability of a burnished edge. I have no idea. I doubt it though, I think the belt was just average. The roller buckle was underwhelming. Granted, 99% of the buckles available on the market are somewhat cookie cutter but the G roller was not at all up to the level of the belts cost, even at the "wholesale and wait for a while" price. 

I cut the rivets off of mine, chucked the roller buckle and installed a brass two bar buckle I had lying around. Decent belt but that's about it. 

I've been mostly happy with the jeans I've purchased from Gustin, liked the duck chinos, liked the duffel from the first run, hated the oxford I bought, it was truly dismal. The veg tan simple wallet I have is ok but nothing special. The belts were the same -ok. The roller buckles Gustin uses on their belts are less that 4 bucks retail, including the heavy/1.75. Draw your own conclusion.

That's the sum total of my  purchases except for three upcoming workshirts. We shall see.....

Accueil thomasss!

Nice to have you here.  Gustin likely won't do another BEAST, and not even sure about another 23, but Lawless seems like a good bet for heavy denims.
Wore the beasts out last night and it was finally cool outside and they were nice and warm.  I would have loved these when I was in France in 2011.  We went there in December and stayed in the 11th arrondissement in a nice apartment for 10 days before going to Normandy.  LOVE France and the people were amazingly nice!  Can't wait to go back.

Scott

Thanx scott for the "bon accueil" !!! ;-))
oh, that's a pitty Gustin won't make more very heavy denims...

For lawless, i don't really know what to think about them, i read really bad reviews just after i made my order.
I'm a little bit afraid that i won't get my jacket.
I choose a jacket type 2 but i don't even know if they still produce it but i was able choose it. it was $79 but i think it is really cheap, i'm not sure what to think about. let's wait : i cross my fingers... (can you say that? you cross your fingers too in USA to get lucky?)
Does anybody get their recently their order from them?

i'm from Tours in France : 2 hours south by car from Paris : goat cheese, white and sparkling wine, castles and forest... not a bad place.
Many of my friends are from Coutainville in Normandie : love this place. You should check the fisherman pullover brand St james : very good quality in wool and very warm.
Perfect to wear them with a warm and heavy denim !!!

cheers
Thomas

I am local in Phoenix and I have been to/met with Roman and his crew at Lawless. Great people. I've seen the quality firsthand. In addition, start here, it's a write-up from Unnamed who received a pair of Lawless denim already. 

In addition, I have an oiled cotton jacket, care of Lawless - It fits perfectly. The craftsmanship is very high-end and the little details such as the reinforced stitching (as seen in the denim write up) are consistent with the jacket as well.  

It's this jacket (I'm not the model in this pic) - here - Not lined, but I don't need lining for AZ weather. If I were to get a lined jacket, I'd consider something more WS style/CPO style or even opt for the kevlar design with a request to swap the kevlar for something lined (flannel?). I don't have measurement specs, I tried it on and it fit like a glove. 

Yes, it's the 12 oz canvas, which fortunately hasn't shown any signs of bleeding through. I am looking forward to how it ages with oil applications. Should be a fun ride.

SteveKAS makes belts, and other cool stuff: www.etsy.com/shop/MarshdownGoods

Is that who you were thinking of?

I'm definitely going to be picking up some of his work ..... and look forward to whatever he does going forward. Sweet looking stuff! (I wonder if the Kakishibu dye will show up in something he's doing?)

Wait a min..... FourHorsemen is a member from a famous band?! Forgive my naivety!!!

Have you guys uses www.propercloth.com ? I have a buddy that got a bunch of shirts from there and he loves them. They are made to your specific measurements and every detail of the shirt is customizable down to the collar and cuff types. The less expensive shirts there are about the same price as the gustin shirts and production is faster.

I think that gustin still has value in the jean market (we will see what lawless does to this), but just about everything else is similarly priced to something you can get at a big box for the same or less money and no wait. I don't understand why the shirts are so expensive. There is nothing special about them. I thought they were a little cheap feeling to be honest. The CPO i think is a good deal. Hopefully it turns out.

Anyway, I do believe that they are going to have to continue to innovate to stay relevant.

Crowd sourcing is like red box. It was cool for a little bit but all take a brick and mortar store over it. Damn how I miss movie stores.

I've been thinking about this throughout today, and I think my commentary has been based more on reaction to the comments that someone posted that Gustin was moving their community into the better established forums (style forum and reddit) and paring down their community support, combined with the way the Q&A seemed to have gone ignored. So I was perhaps being more emotional than I needed to be, because I do still love much of the Gustin product I've received, and I do still enjoy what they're doing in denim.

That said, it is my intention to slow down my funding with Gustin, largely because their model is aging poorly. This doesn't make them bad, they're just not shifting to match what their competitors are doing, which is sort of spring-boarded off of what Gustin has spent the last few years doing. I don't think they see any reason to change, as this model is successful for them, and as I've said, it's very rare that a campaign fails to fund. I don't feel that it scales quite as well as they indicate it does, as increases in volume seem to have real effects on my experience as a customer (update frequency, community involvement), and I don't like the way it appears. I still like what they're doing, I'm just less enamored with the way they're doing it.

I'm going to be wearing their denim for years to come, and I have no reason to believe it's not going to last those years. I will likely occasionally back things as they come up, because they do offer up some pretty cool stuff I don't see elsewhere. Will Roman at Lawless encroach on that, it's looking likely -- especially if he's in with the same vendors that Gustin uses. He seems to share an eye for cool fabric. I think there are very cool things happening in this space, and I think Gustin would be blind not to see a lot of it. I'm sure they're going to adapt in some way, and I look forward to seeing it.

What do you all thinking about the price point on the "scarfs" as half the cost of the shirts almost with less material and a tone less work to construct, does it seem high?