Buy PDX: SE PDX is not Southeast Portland

I stumbled onto Portland's purest purist denim boutique because of a hat and a misunderstanding.

I kept seeing the cap around town: white print on green shell that read SE PDX. I know an Ebbets Field Flannels design when I see one, but scouring the Southeast quadrant for the hat, I found nothing. Eventually, I stumbled upon it in one of the furthest places you can get from Southeast PDX, at least ideologically. Across Burnside from Powells City of Books, tucked in the high-end Union Way shopping alley, a Japanese purist denim store had the hat in it's window. "SE" did not mean what I thought it did.

Self Edge is a retail store with locations in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Portland. Besides the best-selling, misleading hat, Self Edge sells something that screams Portland: selvedge denim.

There is no acid wash, light colored, or pre-distressed pants at Self Edge. It's just racks of $300 pairs of pants that you wear everyday, without washing, until they look like your brand new Levi's.

What you know about Japanese culture from watching Jiro Dreams of Sushi may have some crossover here. Japan's purist, hyper-focused culture brings us impeccable sushi, amazing coffee, and strange TV shows. They make the best raw denim as well.

Self Edge pants are meant to last a lifetime. If they do wear, the company repairs jeans in-house with a machine that weaves new fabric into the pants. 

There's one accommodation they're holding out on though. "We've had a lot of requests to do the other quadrants," manager Tyler Madden said of Self Edge's hats. For now, SE PDX will stick to $300 blue jeans, which would be a rare find in any other quadrant, especially Southeast. 

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WWeek 2015