Quality never goes out of style, but when manufacturing is shipped overseas and corners are cut in pursuit of profit margins, consumers must go great lengths to recreate the heritage quality of the past. Such is the case for Eugene’s own David Mattox, 42, whose work in the Alaskan fishing industry exposed the flaws in denim, forcing him to roll up his sleeves and take matters into his own hands.

His jeans are crafted with years of experience braving massive swells in the Gulf of Alaska, where Mattox developed a uniquely utilitarian view on workwear. His lived experience and attention to detail reframes a subgenre of fashion which has shifted towards gaudy adornment in recent years. Guided by a penchant for pre-World War II era sewing machines and nearly a decade of trial and error, his denim creations guide workwear back to its roots in timelessness, reliability and dedication to craft.

Mattox, who grew up in Boring, Oregon, has a storied history with America’s most historic denim manufacturer. “My grandpa gave my dad two pairs of Levi’s 501s every Christmas,” Mattox said. “That was a constant, positive thing that happened every year in my dad’s life, so he started giving me two pairs of Levi’s every year in high school.”

In the early days, Mattox’s Levi’s were a treasured possession, and he acquired piles of the then sturdy jeans.

While he never had any real interest in fashion, Mattox’s interest in reputable workwear brands developed throughout high school and college, and he gravitated towards brands like Filson and Pendleton, which were made in the Pacific Northwest.

“At the time, I thought buying Filson and Pendleton was buying locally because I lived in Portland,” Mattox said. “Maybe that’s why those brands were important to me in my teens and twenties.”

For Mattox, the practical and almost bulletproof quality of 20th century manufacturing instilled a reverence for the purposefully created garments. After he received his father’s 1940s Filson hunting jacket, he became inseparable from the collection of artifacts which made up his wardrobe, adopting a worldy pride as he wore them. Amid droves of graduating seniors donning trendy Old Navy and Gap cargo pants at the turn of the century, Mattox stuck to his guns.

“I remember one day walking up from the school parking lot with like 10 buddies,” Mattox said. “I looked around and I was the only person wearing Levi’s.”

However, as Mattox entered college at University of Portland in the early 2000s, Levi’s — and an array of similarly esteemed manufacturers — began to shift operations overseas. At the same time, Mattox, who was a year into his philosophy and English double major, happened upon a summer job at an Alaskan fishery. In the years that followed, it became clear his passion for grueling labor and the lifestyle to match would test the mettle of the jeans he loved.

Chasing the allure of a profitable summer job and an adventure, Mattox journeyed to the Last Frontier for salmon season.

“The application was basically one question,” Mattox said. “Do you have a pair of boots or do you need a pair?”

But when each laborer is churning through thousands of salmon daily, those who can’t adapt don’t survive.

Mattox, who’s father earned his job on a handshake, was no stranger to a bit of elbow grease and he dived into the thick of things.

“We got started working in the butcher room which is the grossest room to be in,” Mattox said. “It’s cold, bloody and there’s ice and water everywhere. You’re in full rain gear touching fish that have been in refrigerated salt water so you’re just cold, wet and miserable, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun.”

The idea of such conditions being fun is uncommon, with most salmon season opportunists cutting their losses after a few hours on the job. But Mattox fell in love with the strenuous yet fulfilling labor and found his way back every summer afterwards.

By the time he graduated college, Mattox had progressed from the cannery to the boats and his Levi’s couldn’t keep up. As he pulled massive buoys from swells over eight feet, his jeans— and their shoddy overseas manufacturing— began to deteriorate before his eyes.

“I just remember that first summer thinking, ‘Wow these buoys don’t give a shit about my Levi’s,’” Mattox said. “It got to a point when two pairs of 501s would fall apart before I even had the chance to break them in. You can see the details and construction of some of my earlier pairs, like the inseam was flat felled, so Levi’s was changing things and their pants weren’t lasting as long as they used to.”

Annoyed with constantly replacing inferior pairs of jeans at an ever increasing price point, Mattox scoured the internet, inevitably discovering the world of selvedge denim. “I was like ‘there’s gotta be a better way,’ but at that time I had never heard of selvedge denim,” Mattox said. “I didn’t think one fabric was different from another. Or that one would last longer or break in differently.”

Recently, “selvedge” has been circulating internet menswear circles as a catch-all term to imply a thoughtfully made pair of jeans. While in 2025 this isn’t necessarily the case, with fast fashion brands like UNIQLO making their own “selvedge” denim, the fabric —invented in 18th century France and perfected in post-war Japan— was initially constructed to be the gold standard for workwear. Selvedge refers to a self finished edge of the denim fabric and is woven using antique shuttle looms, which imbue less tension on the yarn, resulting in a distinct fade.

Mattox’s deep dive into denim’s past led him to an obsession with mid-century sewing machines. “I love the old machines because they represent the period of manufacturing in this country which is polar opposite to what it is today,” Mattox said. “At that time we were trying to build the best sewing machine possible because we needed to defeat fascism in Europe.”

By the mid 2010s, Mattox, who spent winters in Boston, had acquired his first 40s era Singer sewing machine. It was then he made a breakthrough. “I remember finding Pacific Blue Denim and realizing that I could buy the denim, making a $350 pair of pants for $7 a yard,” Mattox said.“So for $25 worth of fabric, all I had to do was learn how to put the pieces together.”

His creations have always been purely utilitarian and inspired by lived experience. “When I started making pants, I decided to taper them a bit more,” Mattox said. “Because in Alaska we wear thigh high boots, so you don’t want a whole bunch of extra fabric in your boots.”

Much like his background, his attitude toward sewing is unconventional. “I approach sewing in the way that my mom did when she would fix things,” Mattox said. “She didn’t have formal sewing training but she patched my jeans up as a kid, through high school and college. I’d take my jeans home so she could put patches on the knees with zigzag crossing all over it. It was hideous but it was also cool, and it was one of a kind.”

Eight years later, Mattox has refined both his creations and his machines. He currently boasts a humble basement workshop and owns over 20 bombproof Singers, crafting classic American silhouettes for himself and his friends, selling customs to the occasional inquirer.

Mattox represents the true spirit of workwear — a genre of fashion which has been misconstrued in the 21st century. As uncalloused hands reached for new and thrifted variations of Carhartt, Levi’s and Ben Davis, phrases like “blue collar stolen valor” began to appear in internet lexicon. While the idea of blue collar posers is steeped in irony, the trend of affluent and presumably white-collar men donning attire meant for long hours of manual labor has taken the zeitgeist by storm.

Mattox’s perspective provides a refreshing contrast to the fashion community at large. For him, the jeans he makes represent work. “They’re work pants. I get excited about wearing a pair of pants while I work because that’s how they get broken in,” Mattox said. “They don’t get broken while sitting at a desk. I want to go out and I want to get them dirty. I want to work hard, sweat and drink a beer and smoke a cigarette afterwards.”

While making jeans is his current endeavor, Mattox has always had a passion for understanding the world around him and his creative eye has matured over time, bleeding into all facets of his life. From curating bottle collections and whittling wooden pins throughout his childhood, to understanding communication through photography and language as a writer and philosopher, to his current pastimes of cuisine and clothing.

“I like seeing the way things work,” Mattox said. “I take pride in that in a way. It’s fun to have a weird obscure set of tools basically in your head.”

More concretely, Mattox finds joy in using creation to cement himself in the flow of time. “I get the same satisfaction from making things, be it a wooden box, a plate of food or a pair of jeans,” Mattox said. “There’s something about having that object at the end of the process. You have an artifact now, it’s gonna exist in the world somewhere (and) out of your control.”

With such a diverse array of creative experiences and decades of experience, one would expect Mattox to be sharing his wealth of knowledge on social media. However, evading internet ostentation, Mattox opted for a more understated approach, donning a username derived from half a quote from his favorite book, the beautiful and nonsensical epic, “Gravity’s Rainbow” by Thomas Pynchon. The quote, “names by themselves may be empty, but the act of naming,” stresses the importance of intention and represents Mattox’s brand to a tee.

Even the family logo he engraves on each garment’s leather patch is the product of years of experience. “Growing up, you’d get a sharpie out and put it on your coolers and baseball mitts,” Mattox said. “So when we were at the park or the baseball game we knew what was ours and what wasn’t. It was the Mattox family brand.”

The mindset of simplicity and intentionality which Mattox represents has become blurred in the eyes of the next generations, whose attention is attracted to the LED screens which make up the world, rather than the history of the world that surrounds them. According to Mattox, as the complexity of the machines and institutions which make up our world continue to increase, there’s a simple yet fundamental secret which is often overlooked.

“The best tool you can have when it comes to making something is understanding how your machine works,” Mattox said. “A sewing machine is a tool, the same way an iPad is a tool, but people expect their tools to do things for them.”

As the tools we interact with daily become more complex, it has become increasingly easy to adopt a blissful ignorance. However, taking a few minutes to read the manual is well worth it.“It’s usually the most simple things that people overlook,” Mattox said.

Mattox’s denim reflects life. The secret to a killer fade is to put in the time and embrace the struggle because the result is a unique and beautiful character.

“You’ll break in a pair of pants way different than I break in a pair of pants,” Mattox said. “So go out in the world and break them in.”