Bronson/Okonkwo Wabash Denim Work Shirts from China

WHAT IS WABASH? www.ironhearta...
The name ‘wabash’ comes from the Indian Wabash tribe of the American mid-west. They modified workwear staples that were made of denim and then traded them to the white men who worked in manual labor positions as ‘decorated workwear’. Wabash looks like quite a formal fabric, but in fact, it was commonly used for workwear from the early 1800s through to the early 1900s, very often as uniforms for the massive US railroads workforce.
Finding out a lot about Wabash is very difficult, but we believe there were 2 ways in which the dots were originally ‘applied’ to the base fabric: 1) the pattern would be applied as a block print to the undyed fabric with a starch based “resist” and then dyed, the dye not adhering to the resistant pattern; and 2) the fabric was dyed and then the pattern bleached into the fabric - this was done by applying a mildly acidic solution to the cloth via copper rollers with the pattern raised from the surface of the roller, a process known as discharge printing.
Perhaps the most famous of the American Wabash dying and printing companies was J.L. Stifel & sons set up in West Virginia in 1835. They called their product ‘Indigo Wabash Stripe’, and it was often characterized by an impressive assortment of dots, triangles, and diamonds. A few examples of these can be found in ‘King of Vintage vol 3’ by Rin Tanaka.