How Tellason Preserved its Unique Spirit Through Japanese Craftsmanship

Tellason is one of those brands we’ve admired ever since we first found our way into the world of denim. Their garments are exceptionally well made, cut in fantastic silhouettes, feature unique details and, oh boy, their denim fades amazingly!

Founded in 2008 by Pete Searson and Tony Patella, Tellason grew out of a shared passion for quality, craftsmanship and American-made products. At a time when much of the American apparel industry was moving production overseas, Pete and Tony chose a different path. Rather than chasing trends or trying to increase their margins, they focused on building a Made in America collection of durable garments they genuinely wanted to wear themselves.

What started as a small denim brand founded by two friends has since grown into one of the most respected names in heritage menswear. Along the way, Tellason has built a loyal following by staying true to its original vision, something that has been one of the brand’s defining pillars from the beginning.

“Not Trying to Be All Things to All People”

There are few places that feel more natural for a denim brand than San Francisco. As the birthplace of blue jeans and a city known for its independence, individuality and doing things differently, it embodies many of the values that would later define Tellason itself. Or, in Pete and Tony’s own words: “San Francisco was the perfect place to start a denim brand. Not the easiest, not the least expensive, but the best.”

From the very beginning, Pete and Tony wanted to create high-quality classics that do not have an “expire by” date. And so they did. Rather than chasing trends or creating a broad collection to serve as many customers as possible, Tellason built its identity around timeless American workwear pieces designed to remain in the collection for decades to come. Their goal is simple. If you bought a Tellason garment ten years ago, it should still be part of the collection today and remain there ten years from now.

Over nearly two decades, consistency has become one of Tellason’s strongest characteristics. While the industry and denim community around them have changed, the brand has remained true to its original vision, from its signature fits and timeless designs to its approach to fabrics and manufacturing.

The American Denim Connection

Just as the spirit of San Francisco proved to be a natural match for Tellason, so did the brand’s relationship with Cone Mills’ White Oak plant. White Oak was one of America’s most historic and influential denim mills, having once been the largest denim mill in the world. For a brand built around San Francisco’s denim heritage, teaming up with the North Carolina-based mill created a powerful Made in America connection and gave Tellason access to more than a century of denim heritage, manufacturing experience and technical knowledge.

The relationship with Cone Mills would soon become much more than simply that of a brand and its fabric supplier, making White Oak an important part of Tellason’s broader Made in America philosophy. Before starting Tellason, Tony already had contacts at Cone Mills from his earlier work in the denim industry. When he and Pete launched the brand, those relationships helped the young brand gain access to White Oak’s fabrics and unusually favorable terms. Long before Tellason had established itself as a recognized denim brand, White Oak was already willing to place its trust in Pete and Tony.

Cone treated Tellason very differently from the average new brand. Pete and Tony were able to explore the mill’s complete denim offering from the beginning and, once they started developing their own fabrics, Cone even relaxed its usual production minimums to make those projects possible. By offering this level of flexibility, Cone Mills showed an early confidence in Pete and Tony’s vision. Tellason, in return, would eventually grow into one of White Oak’s most committed customers.

The Fabric That Wasn’t Supposed to Change

In many ways, White Oak was the perfect partner for Tellason. The mill represented many of the same things Pete and Tony valued: American manufacturing, craftsmanship, consistency and a belief that quality and heritage should matter more than chasing the highest possible margin. Together with White Oak, Tellason developed three proprietary selvedge denim fabrics that would go on to become the backbone of the brand’s denim collection.

Tellason’s first proprietary White Oak fabric was the 12.5 oz selvedge, developed with a relatively high sulfur content to reduce crocking and help the denim retain its color for longer. The 14.75 oz selvedge followed with a much higher indigo concentration, while their heaviest signature fabric, the 16.5 oz selvedge, used less indigo saturation but more starch and wax in the finish, resulting in the strong high-contrast fades it became known for.

By 2017, around nine years after Tellason and White Oak first started working together, Tellason had become White Oak’s fourth-largest customer. It showed just how important the relationship had become, despite Tellason still being a relatively small independent brand.

And then, on December 31, 2017, White Oak closed its doors, bringing an end to more than a century of denim production in Greensboro.

The closure was a major blow to the American denim industry and put Tellason in a very difficult position. White Oak had not only become one of its most important long-term partners, but the fabrics they had developed together had also become fundamental to the identity of Tellason denim.

When Staying the Same Became Difficult

For a brand built on consistency, White Oak’s closure meant much more than simply losing a supplier. Pete and Tony had spent years building their collection around carefully developed fabrics, familiar fits and products that customers could return to season after season. Suddenly, one of the foundations of that consistency was gone.

The easiest and most obvious solution would have been to find another denim mill, select another high-quality selvedge denim and continue producing the same silhouettes. They could have chosen fabrics with similar weights, constructions and fading potential, or even used White Oak’s closure as an opportunity to reinvent their denim altogether. But that wasn’t what Pete and Tony were looking for. Rather than finding something new, they wanted to preserve what they had built with White Oak.

They needed a mill capable of recreating not only the specifications of their proprietary fabrics, but also the character their customers had come to recognize as Tellason denim. With no straightforward American replacement for White Oak, their attention eventually turned across the Pacific.

A Journey From North Carolina to Hiroshima

Japan was a natural place to look. The country had already established itself as home to some of the finest denim in the world, with mills that had spent decades mastering traditional denim production while building an incredible amount of technical knowledge along the way. For Tellason, this meant there were mills capable of understanding not only how to produce a great selvedge denim, but also how to reproduce the small details that had made their White Oak fabrics so recognizable.

After drawing up a shortlist of potential partners, Kaihara, one of Japan’s most respected denim mills, stood out as the strongest choice.

Founded in Hiroshima Prefecture in 1893, Kaihara had more than a century of textile experience by the time Tellason came knocking. The mill entered denim production in 1970 and, by 1994, had begun full-scale production of vintage denim on shuttle looms. Its combination of textile history, deep technical knowledge, reliability and ability to develop proprietary fabrics made Kaihara a perfect match for what Pete and Tony were trying to achieve.

On paper, everything seemed to line up. In reality, however, recreating nearly a decade of White Oak fabric development on the other side of the Pacific was going to require a lot more than simply choosing another great denim.

The Continuation of White Oak Through Japan

What made White Oak so important to Tellason was never simply the fact that it produced American selvedge denim. It was the fabrics themselves: their hand feel, their distinctive characteristics and, most importantly, the way they evolved with wear. Those were exactly the qualities Pete and Tony wanted to preserve.

And this is where the story becomes especially interesting to us. Kaihara wasn’t being asked to simply develop another great Japanese denim. Tellason wanted the mill to recreate fabrics that already had almost a decade of history behind them. Raw samples showed Kaihara how the fabrics started, while heavily worn pairs showed how they needed to evolve. Weight alone wasn’t enough; yarn construction, indigo concentration, finishing, hand feel and fading characteristics all had to come together.

It took around four months of development to get there. Through trial and error, Kaihara managed to recreate the yarns and indigo concentrations to an almost identical level, making the transition from White Oak remarkably seamless. The fabrics retained the character Tellason was looking for and continued to develop the high-contrast fades for which the brand had become known.

Since 2019, Tellason’s signature 12.5 oz, 14.75 oz and 16.5 oz denims have been proprietary Kaihara fabrics. And that is what makes the move to Japan so interesting. An important part of American denim manufacturing had disappeared, yet it was a Japanese mill with the technical knowledge and patience to reproduce Tellason’s fabrics that allowed the brand to continue what it had already built. Rather than reinventing Tellason denim, Japan helped ensure that it could remain unmistakably Tellason.

Consistency Woven Into Every Yarn

Looking back, the transition from White Oak to Kaihara says a lot about the Tellason we know today.

To us, that is perhaps the most interesting part of Tellason’s story. Their consistency has never been about refusing to change, but about knowing exactly what should remain unchanged. When circumstances forced Pete and Tony to change one of the foundations of their product, they changed where the denim was made without changing what Tellason denim was supposed to feel like, wear like and eventually fade like.

That same philosophy still defines Tellason today. The fabrics may now come from Japan and the industry around them continues to evolve, but the underlying principles remain the same: Made in USA manufacturing, a focused collection, proven fits, timeless designs and products intended to earn their character through years of wear rather than a single season.

This balance between consistency and necessary change has helped Tellason become one of the most respected American heritage denim brands of the modern era. Perhaps Pete and Tony summed up that philosophy best when we asked what they hoped future generations would still recognize as unmistakably Tellason:

“That if a guy loved the jeans he stole from his dad in 2026, he can still get the same fit and fabric in 2046.”