What do you get when you cross
Vintage Black Denim,
Teacore Leather,
and a Classic Hawaiian Slipper?

Last summer, our neighbor Marcus Wainwright from Rag & Bone came into the shop to pick up some T-shirts or something, wearing a pair of “thong” sandals.

Immediately, I decided that my long-held belief that sandals were strictly beachwear was completely wrong.

As long as you don’t have nasty-ass toenails, get those sandals on.

Then, as luck would have it, we met Island Slipper at a trade show about a month later and immediately hit it off. In addition to deciding to carry their sandals in our store, we started talking about how we could make something uniquely Grown & Sewn.

We were talking insanely simple, but made with something extraordinarily special.

Around the same time, we were buying leather for the straps on our American Canvas ball caps, and I noticed that S.B. Foot had some beautiful tea-core leather, similar to the leather Red Wing uses for Black Prairie and Black Klondike.

If you’re unfamiliar with tea-core leather, the surface is black, but the leather underneath is brown. As it gets worn, scratched, scuffed, and broken in, the black slowly gives way to the brown below.

In other words, it gets better looking the more you wear it.

I mentioned that I’d love to use it for the sandal footbed because of the way it would age.

The leather as it came from the tannery was just a hair too thick, so we decided to split the hides. That gave us exactly the thickness we wanted for a comfortable, long-lasting footbed, while also leaving us with a second usable piece of leather: a beautiful brown rough-out, sort of like what you might see on a Birkenstock.

So instead of wasting part of the hide, we ended up with two different, equally great versions of the sandal.

For the uppers, we wanted to use something we already had.

The design team at Grown & Sewn had been smart enough to stock up on 11 oz. Cone Mills White Oak black denim, and we had leftover pieces from making our Walsh work shirts and chore jackets.

There turned out to be enough of it to produce the entire run of sandal uppers.

And somehow, there was still enough left over to make an entire run of ball caps from the exact same material.

Which brings us from NY to HI.

Hello, Aloha, Howzit, Bonjour, Hola, Hallo, Ciao, 你好, こんにちは, 안녕하세요, नमस्ते, مرحبا.

We replaced our usual “NY” on the front of the hats with “HI” for Hawaii.

But, to be completely honest, we like it just as much as a friendly “hello” to anyone who sees it.

Our team, like many of you, are nice people, and we like outwardly conveying our friendly demeanor.

The caps are made from the same Cone Mills White Oak black denim we used on the sandal uppers, and the strap is, of course, Red Wing leather.

Like all of our caps, they have a soft, unstructured brim and our signature Kelly green underbrim that everyone has come to love.

Put all of that together and you get the Grown & Sewn x Island Slipper.

This summer, when you step onto the beach or the boardwalk, you can proudly show the world that you give a shit about American production and manufacturing.

Take 11 oz. Cone Mills White Oak black denim, some beautiful S.B. Foot leather with ties to Red Wing, and combine it with the timeless design and manufacturing coming out of Oahu-based Island Slipper.

What you end up with is what we can only assume is one of the most American pieces of summer footwear out there.

And for everyone else who doesn’t share your oddly specific passion for American manufacturing, they’re just a really good-looking pair of sandals.

The whole project ended up becoming exactly what we wanted it to be.

A very simple sandal. A very simple hat. Great materials. Very little waste. And two things that should look even better after you’ve worn the hell out of them.

Anyway, I hope you’re all even half as excited about these as we are.

I can’t wait to see them in the wild.

Grown & Sewn