Jackman Clothing

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Jackman is made at Tanabe Meriyasu, a factory in Fukui, Japan that started out in 1949 making baseball stockings. Everything still comes off the same machines, and the heavier pieces — Dotsume T-shirts, GG sweats,

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About Jackman clothing

Mitsugu Tanabe left a government job in 1949 to set up a sewing factory in Fukui, on the strength of a fascination with American baseball. He started with three knitting machines in a room of about ten square metres, making stirrup stockings copied from those worn by visiting American teams. The factory built a reputation quickly enough that it supplied training wear for the Japanese Olympic team in 1964. Jackman is that factory's own label, and the clothes are still made there on machines that in some cases date back decades.

Jackman T-shirts, Dotsume and the heavyweight cottons

Dotsume is the series the factory is best known for: cotton knitted about as densely as the machines will take, which is why a Dotsume tee feels closer to a light sweatshirt than a T-shirt. It is the answer to the usual complaint about heavyweight tees — that they go thin and lose their shape after a dozen washes. These do not, and that is the whole point of them.

Alongside those sit the Lead-Off and Pocket T-shirts in lighter cotton, the Henleyneck long sleeves, and the waffle mid-necks, where a raised waffle knit traps air against the skin and works as a mid-layer without the bulk of a fleece.

Jackman sweats, parkas and trousers

The GG sweats are the core of the range, in more colours than anything else here, and the Chewy and Back Nep pieces sit above them in weight. Back Nep is a yarn spun with deliberate slubs in it, so the surface has texture and the colour breaks up slightly rather than sitting flat — it looks worn-in from the first day. On the bottoms, the Umps pants and shorts take their name from baseball umpires, which is the sportswear thread running back through the whole thing.

Browse all clothing at Yards Store, read more in our Jackman feature, or try things on at our Manchester store.

Jackman FAQs

In Fukui, Japan, at the Tanabe Meriyasu factory the brand grew out of. Jackman is a factory label rather than a design house that outsources production, so the same building that made baseball stockings in the 1950s makes the T-shirts and sweats now, partly on the original machines.
It refers to knitting cotton at very high density — roughly, packed tight. Dotsume pieces are noticeably heavier and firmer than a standard T-shirt and are made to keep their shape through repeated washing rather than thinning out.
Nep is deliberate slubs and knots left in the yarn. Back Nep places them on the reverse of the fabric, which gives the surface a broken, textured look and a slightly uneven colour. It is intentional rather than a flaw, and it is why Back Nep pieces look softened from new.
A raised waffle knit in a neckline that sits between a crew and a mock, cut to work as a mid-layer. The waffle structure holds air against the skin, so it insulates for its weight without the bulk of a fleece, and the higher neck sits comfortably under a jacket collar.