One of the Bay Area’s most revered fashion artisans, Roy Slaper, has died at age 54. The Oakland craftsman was known throughout the denim world for creating some of the most meticulously crafted jeans ever made by a sole individual. When he started making jeans in 2007, it was nearly unprecedented for the clothing item to be made outside a factory setting. His cause of death was not released.
“It’s pretty much unheard of for someone to make their own jeans because it requires a lot of machines, industrial machines that you can’t find easily,” said Kiya Babzani, whose shop Self Edge began as the exclusive carrier of Roy Denim. “And then of course it takes a lot of practice to make a pair of jeans that looks decent.”
Born in 1971, Slaper moved from Arizona to the Bay Area in the early ’90s, making ends meet as a metalworker and becoming immersed in skateboard culture. He decided he wanted to make a pair of jeans for himself, and threw himself into the hobby with a passion, working on the project 10 hours a day. Slaper started filling his 10-by-13-foot studio apartment with sewing machines until there was no furniture except a foam mat kept in the closet to use for a bed.
“I got so into the machinery of it. That’s what makes my stuff different than other DIY stuff,” Slaper said in an interview with Apparel News. “This is not some Martha Stewart operation. I’m like a real factory.”
He eschewed contemporary tools in favor of vintage machinery, like pre-1960 Union Special and Singer sewing machines.
Oakland denim maker Roy Slaper died at age 54. (Courtesy of Kiya Babzani)
“They sew a lot slower and make a better looking stitch. Modern machines are concerned primarily with speed,” he told 5election. “The older machines are also made from better quality steel, whereas many parts on modern machines are plastic or sub-grade steel and aluminium. The aesthetic factor can’t be ignored either; they look so good.”
It didn’t take long for Slaper to create a product that impressed even a professional denim purveyor like Babzani.
“Within a year, he was making the best looking jeans I’d ever seen in my life that were made by a single person. Like nobody had made jeans like this,” said Babzani.
Oakland denim maker Roy Slaper died at age 54. (Courtesy of Kiya Babzani)
A one-man operation, Slaper created runs of 150 jeans at a time. As word spread, demand far outpaced supply.
“They would sell out within 30 minutes,” said Babzani. “We’d have lines of people at our store waiting for us to open the day of release.” Sometimes people would offer $1,000 to reserve a pair, and shops in Japan clamored to carry his wares.
He became world renowned within menswear circles, traveling to a denim factory in Pakistan and indigo dye operations in Japan, where he lived for several months. Slaper eventually expanded beyond Self Edge to an e-commerce site, but still refused to hire additional craftspeople, telling WWD that delegation compromised the quality of other garment makers.
“You see them fall flat on their face because they try to scale up, and they lose the whole essence of what they had in the first place,” he said.
Rooted in craftsmanship rather than experimentation, one might not notice the difference between a pair of Roy Denim and Levi’s from afar.
“The way I design is machine-driven, it’s not necessarily style-driven,” he told Cool Hunting.
But according to Babzani, the meticulousness of the stitching was apparent even to the untrained eye.
“The inside is where the magic took place. They just looked like nothing else you’ve seen,” said Babzani.
Oakland denim maker Roy Slaper died at age 54. (Courtesy of Kiya Babzani)
In 2021, Slaper unexpectedly retired from making jeans, selling all of his equipment, but not before he inspired a new generation of bespoke denimmakers around the world. In the past few years, he continued skateboarding and open sea swimming, and he’d recently started working a few days a week at Osha Thai, an eatery in Oakland.
“He had an insatiable curiosity that led him to master not only denim but other passions like running, drawing, train travel, or whatever other bug happened to grab him,” wrote David Shuck for Heddels. “He also possessed a kindness and sensitivity for the world that was a comfort to all who knew him.”
This article originally published at World-renowned Oakland denim maker Roy Slaper dies at 54.