Leather Jacket Repair

Your leather jacket is torn or worn out and need repainting or rewaxing?

No need to worry. In Bandung, you can have it repaired and reconditioned in a road-side kiosk like this one at Ciroyom area. For a relatively small fee, you can have your leather jacket stitched, repainted, or rewaxed.

The Underwear

Even in the English language, these things are called by different generic names. The most common names for them are: Undergarment, underwear, underclothes (underclothing), and undies. But they are also called reg grundys (in Australia), smalls (the short term for smallclothes in the UK).

There are also specific names referring to the different types of this kind of garment. Those worn by women are generically called lingerie or intimates (shortened version of intimate clothing). I don't know if there is a generic name for those worn by men.

Undergarments serves a variety of functions. The most basic is probably to keep the outer garments from from being stained by sweat, and for those who live in the colder climate, to provide extra layer of clothing to keep warm. However, today underclothing is not just the basic essential clothing like in the old days. Their functions have developed to include those such as providing extra support, comfort, and protection for the vital parts of the body in in high-impact sports, shaping or emphasizing the body shape, etc.

The oldest underwear ever found by archeologists is known to be 7000 years old. Of course it doesn't look like anything we have today. It was only a loincloth.

By the way, I took the above photo at the King Shopping Center, on Jalan Kepatihan, Bandung. That's how vendors display the undergarments for sale in this market.

Jeans Doctor

One of the disadvantages of buying ready made clothes or trousers is that sometimes they don't really fit your body size. But that's usually not a problem as many shops now offer to fix them to fit your body size. In Bandung, this service is not only offered by big department stores, but also by street jeans doctors like this one. You can find them in places where there are clothing shops like on Cihampelas Street (Bandung's Jeans and Fashion street), Pasar Baru, etc.

A Bit of History of Jeans and Blue Jeans

Made from tough fabric called denim, Jeans trousers, as many of you may already know, was originally designed for work. It was initially worn by man and woman workers of the Second World War before it became popular as a casual dress among teenagers in the 1950's.

Jeans, especially blue jeans, are often associated with cowboys and the American Old West. What many of us may not know, however, is that the name "jeans" is not of American origin. The term blue jeans - the original fabric and color of today's jeans - was derived from blu di Genoa or Bleu Genes (the blue of Genoa) because it is believed that it was the Genoese sailors who were the first to wear this kind of clothing in the 1860s. The denim fabric itself, according to Wikipedia, was first manufactured in the town of Chieri in Turin, Italy, during the Renaissance and became popular in the 1500s.