San Francisco

In films, recreating 1950s simplicity requires excruciating attention to detail -- Grease tackled everything from cars to cig-smoking style, while The Buddy Holly Story tackled making Gary Busey look like anyone other than Gary Busey. Giving that treatment to menswear, The Flat Head.

The livelihood of a crew of Nagano rockabillies, TFH is a line of true-to-vintage Americana-wear, handcrafted with painstaking effort at a rural compound full of Bel Aires, Harleys, and sake-swilling tanukies (raccoon-dogs you might remember from Super Mario III, and earlier in this sentence). The foundation's slim/regular/boot-cut jeans, 100% indigo surface-dyed (inside undyed), woven on 1940s shuttle looms, and held together with pliable cotton (not polyester) thread -- methods/materials that pave a path to the "worn look" more gracefully than popping pills in one end and mini K-Feds out the other. Torso-wise, TFH rigs up the same looms to produce rugged flannel button-downs with selvedge-like imperfections; meanwhile, their 5oz-cotton 'downs are fitted with side-seam accents and mother-of-pearl inlayed snap buttons, giving women something to admire even if they're a gateway to something they will not.

If you're compelled to accessorize, TFH boasts leather woven keychains, belts with buckles forged from nickel-plated stainless steel, and debossed steerhide wallets so cool, when you whip yours out to pay for Luckies, you'll look like the La Bamba.