M1002,” a Historic Model No. in the History of Japanese Jeans

The predecessor of Big John, Maruo Clothing had imported used jeans from the U.S. since 1950s and sold them in Japan. The ragged jeans packed in cardboard boxes sold like hot cakes in Japan after the war.

But the founder, Mr. Ozaki did not quite get it. Probably because of his craftsman spirit inherent in Japanese, he immediately wondered if he and his colleagues could somehow make jeans themselves. In the middle of 1960s, Maruo Clothing managed to reach a contract with Cone Mills, a U.S. company (current Cone Denim) and denim fabric was delivered to the company at a later day.
The fabric was hard like a tin plate.
After a process of trial and error including improving needles for sewing shoes in order to sew the fabric like an iron plate, a piece of jeans made from sheer exposure was finally born in Kojima. This was the BIG JOHN Lot, M1002. “M” of M1002 was from the initial of Maruo.
Then, M1002 evolved with the trend of technological innovation in 1967, 1968, and 1973.

In this project named "ARCHIVE," we have gathered the M1002 jeans from the archive material room, thoroughly analyzed a modern high quality concept and fit that preserves the heritage spirit of each single products. Therefore decided to release a reproduction model in 2010
While setting a complete reproduction of M1002 as a goal, we have added a modern essence to it and expressed the reproduction model as the shape of new BIG JOHN.