Short Stuff: Corduroy

of um. I think it was dom Arera. He used to be a regular on that and he used to go like Dr Cats, And it's always it's been in my head since. Oh man, Dr Cats was great. I miss it really was. Let's go watch some after this. Okay, all right, but let's talk about cord of Roy first. Sure, sure, that's fine. We can talk about about that, because you see him wearing it in honor of today. I know you're wearing some rust colored corduroy pants that I would say are maybe a probably about a twelve ten to

twelve whale, yeah, because maybe eight. They're pretty standard Levi's chords whatever that whale is. And if you're wondering what we're talking about, we'll tell you here in a minute after we get to a little bit of the the history here, which is debatable. Apparently it is because it's either French in origin, uh korda do roy the King's cord. But my money is a little more towards what the Brooks brothers say, which is no, mate, it was street

streetwear in eighteenth century England. I don't think the Brooks brothers sound like that. No, what do they sound like? Oh? Really? I can just think of Albert Brooks and super Dave Osborne as the Brooks brothers. Oh that's good. Why Dave oz Born? He's not a Brooks, is he? They're brothers? Man? No? No? That wow? Man? Their parents must have been really cool probably so okay. So either way, what we're really talking about here is where the origin of the name for

the fabric came from. It looks chuck like corduroy has its roots way further back than that that. It comes from, possibly and probably a type of fabric from dating back to about two CE back in ancient Egypt called um Fustians. Names after the city where they were made, al Fustat, which is I think Fustian is still actually a term for certain types of corduroy or certain types of fabric, including corduroy that are real thick and squishy and and

originally they were pretty coarse. Yeah, but that Brooks Brothers story has a lot of credibility because the chord uh referencing the rose, the ridges, the chords, and d Roy which is a wolf fabric, right. That sounds like a pretty open and shut case to me. Now, yeah, I'm good, I'm no, I'm with you. I'm going with the Brooks Brothers. Um interpretation to it was really just the um the impression you did that I had an issue, okay, But the fabric itself you think that is Egyptian or Middle Ages,

and then uh later Egyptian you know. So, so it was Egyptian first, but it was um, it wasn't corded. There weren't whales on it. It was just one thick piece of like velvet kind of right, where you have a certain kind of fabric and then woven on top of that fabric, is it the fabric that makes it kind of plushier, thicker, um sturdier, and that is what corduroy is. That it's as base um, and that that's

what they were making for many many centuries. And then finally, at some point during the Middle Ages, somebody said, Hey, I've got a really good idea about this. Let's turn this into corduroy by cutting rows into this stuff. Right. What we do know in the United States is that it was first made in Woolsta, mass In about seventeen eighty. And uh, I do need to shout out Corduroy the Bear here because not only is it does it appear

in this house stuff works short article on corduroy. But I have a pretty great Corturoy the Bear history, which was I loved that book a lot as a kid, did you. I was aware of it, but I think it was a little ahead of my time. Okay, I think it was ahead of my time too. I mean I think it predates me. But I love the story. And my mom made she got a teddy bear that looked kind of like corduroy and made him little corturoy overalls and shorts and what was missing a button? So

that is so sweet. Yeah, I had my very own kind of one of the great things about my mom. And she could really so and so she could make me things when they did not exist on the toy market. Oh that's me. Or she could save some money and just make her own knockoffs. Well we did that as well, right right. I had more than one T shirt made from like curtain fabric. That's hilarious. Um My mom used to take my T shirts and like stuff them and

turn them into pillows when I outgrew them. Oh that's sweet. Yeah, it was pretty sweet. I have no idea where they are anymore, but yeah, I had a few. I had one that said BMX. Oh yeah, that'd be pretty cool to have today. It really would. So we mentioned the whales, uh, and I think we should get to that before we take our little break. The whales are those rigid little ridges W A L E. S. I'm so glad you spelled it. Yeah. Um, And it's the higher the whale count,

the smaller the little ridge is. So if you have worn one of those really fine sort of like corduroy Oxford's. I'm not a huge fan of them for myself. I don't mind the way they look, but I've never liked them for me personally. But that's about a sixteen whale. What don't you like about them? It's just not my bag. I'm not. I'm not big on collar church period. They've they ruffled my neck and my chin. Yeah, um, I but that particular one you just described about the sixteen whale.

Cord think is typically called pink cord. Yeah, you have some of those, right, I do not. But I have to say researching corduroy made me want to go buy some corduroy stuff, so I think it's in the offing. Yeah. My problem with my chords is they really wear out the knees very fast. And I'm not he spends a lot of time on his knees. I'm not scrubbing floor as much or anything. So I don't know what the deal is. Okay, well that's a mystery. I think we can go to a commercial break on. All right, we'll

figure it out. Well, now we're on the road, driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing or two from Josh Madam, Chuck stuff you should know? All right, m all right, Chuck, we're back in. Um, let's talk a little more about how corduroy is made, right, because this blew my mind when I finally saw some diagrams and I understood it. All right, let's hear it. So with a typical fabric, you take two different sets of yarns and you weave them together perpendicular to one another,

and you have fabric. When you're making a fustian, like a thicker, fluffier fabric like say terry cloth or velvet or corduroy, you it's very nice, isn't it, you use a third set of yarn, And so what you have is that basic, you know, flat fabric, and then woven into the top of that is that thicker pile of fabric called the um worst right, okay, And so just leaving it like that, you have something like velvet or

again like terry cloth, which you love so much. But if you want to make corduroy, you take that that um fussy and fabric and then you take a very sharp set of scissors or something like that, and you cut a line all the way along the length of the fabric. And what you've just done is created a two whale um bolt of corduroy. But that's no one's gonna wear that, right, Yeah, And two whale bolt is

a great band name, by the way it is. That's funny because I was just gonna say, the only person who wear that is somebody like Flee from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but he'll wear anything as pants as we've seen over the years. Um. So you start making more cuts and more cuts, and like you were saying, depending on how supple or um nice you want to make the fabric, the more cuts you're gonna make. But however many cuts there are. However many ridges there are

per inch. That's the whale count, and that's kind of describes how thick the ridges are. But the point is when you make that cut, what you've done is cut that top layer of fabric, the additional third set of yarn, and you've cut it into two and you've exposed the other traditional two yarn set of fabric underneath. And that's what corduroy is. It's a raised ridge that used to be all one complete set of yarn, and then there's valleys that are the fabric below. Yeah, I've been practicing

this for for days. That's good, and it's still didn't go according to plant, Like I want to cut my thigh with the razor blade, right now. I'm so frustrated, Chuck. No, I think that was perfect actually, what you end up with and how they actually referred to it in the industry as a three dimensional fabric, a three dimensional pile weave. Uh. And like you've mentioned, velvet and terry cloth are also

three dimensional fabrics and it's pretty great. Um. They say in here, uh that you need to steam or fluff corduroy. I don't think that's the case, or I've never done that. No, only a Brooks Brothers would do that. But I do have a pretty rock end corduroy coat from back in the day. Uh. I mean this thing is I probably had it for twenty years and I got it second hand, and it is beautiful and it's got a really fat whales on it and I don't pull it out much anymore.

It used to be my New York coat, but I've evolved a bit since then, but I still have it and it's it's really a nice coat, that is. Yeah, I think I know that coat you're talking about. I'm either confusing you or Joe McCormick has one that he likes to rock a lot. It's probably Joe, because I haven't one mind in years, okay, but you got your second hand twentysomething years ago, so that would have coincided roughly with the last corduroy revival. And the first one

I remember was in the nineties. Do you remember that. Yeah, I mean they were big in the fifties, certainly in the sixties and seventies, and then in the nineties. I think that's when I got this thing, and I got to I got one shorter one that had a narrower whale, and then this longer one that has the big fat whales, and I think I still have both of them. Is it like a trench coat at corduroy trench coat. Yeah, it's like a long corturoy coat with the big brown

buttons and like a wool uh lapel. Is it like a barn coat or something? What a barn coat? I'm not sure what that is. It sounds like what you're just scribing, You're gonna have to wear this in some day. I'll bring it in, all right, cool bringing in for

show and tell. But yeah, So it was kind of big in the fifties, really took off in the late sixties, and then really huge in the seventies and then went nowhere until the nineties, and then I guess this thing said in the two thousand tens that came back or the two thousands that came back in which I was not aware of that at all. Well, I've always rocked the cord pants, but over the years it has ranged

from like school uniform fabric to UH. In World War One, low ranking soldiers wore it UH work where if you worked in like a factory, because the stuff is pretty warm, because it's thicker, and it's durable too, Yeah, very durable,

excepting the knees and um. And then it's you know, sometimes it's also been looked at as something a little fancier, right, which apparently originally was it was sportswear for the upper class um, and then somehow just kind of fell out of favor and became associated with the working class and the lower classes, and then it's it just kind of stayed that way until, like I think, starting in the twenties, for a little while there it was pretty common as

um upholstery for cars. Did you know that. Yeah, I have seen a car upholstered in Cortroy and it's pretty awesome. I'll bet it's pretty awesome. The only way that could be any better is if there were like patchwork corduroy. Yeah, now I know the jacket that you're talking about. That is Joe's for sure. Yes, I think it even has elbow patches. Yeah. His is more like a blazer, sure, not a duster like yours. Right, what else you got? I got nothing else? Man. I support corduroy, like knowing

a little bit more how it's made. And uh, I say, wear it never out of fashion. Up with corduroy, agreed. Um. If you want to know more about corduroy, by the way, check out headles H E D D E l S dot com. They have something called Corduroy read between the Lines of the Wailed Fabric by James Smith, and it has a picture that will finally explain better than I possibly could how corduroy is made very simply. Yes, Okay, Well, see you guys later, because short stuff is out. Stuff

you should know is production of iHeart Radios. How stuff works. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.