The Real McCoy's

Hitoshi Tsujimoto founded The Real McCoy's in the early 2000s. He began his interest in American vintage clothing with a 40-day road trip across the United States in 1978, where he collected sweatshirts and jeans. After his return, he sold these items at a swap meet in Osaka and soon operated under the business name 'NYLON.' By the mid-1980s, Tsujimoto had opened a physical store in Japan. The Real McCoy's was created to address the scarcity of vintage garments by producing reproductions of items that were difficult to find.

The Real McCoy's operates from four warehouses in Kobe, Japan. The main warehouse contains a design office, a vintage clothing archive, a hardware store area, and a stock room. Most manufacturing processes are outsourced, but the company makes leather jackets and printed T-shirts in-house. The company maintains a fabric archive, with nearly all fabrics being exclusive to The Real McCoy's. Hardware such as zippers, pullers, and studs are often custom-made or sourced from vintage stockpiles that were acquired in the 1980s.

The Real McCoy's uses authentic materials and construction methods based on original vintage garments. For the A-2 leather bomber jackets, the company sources horsehide from Poland, echoing the materials used in original 1930s and 1940s models. Production often relies on vintage sewing machines and techniques to match the fit and finish of historical pieces. About seventy percent of the company’s products are made entirely in-house using equipment and methods from earlier eras.

The Real McCoy's produces garments and accessories under different sub-labels. The Real McCoy's Mainline reproduces military and workwear garments from the 1940s and 1950s, including leather bombers, CPO shirts, and raw denim items. The company owns and uses the Buco label to make J-series leather jackets and motorcycle-inspired clothing. The Joe McCoy line focuses on western Americana, with items such as loopwheeled sweatshirts, chinos, boots, and denim jackets. Double Diamond offers reproductions of early twentieth-century workwear and dress wear, including henley shirts, chambrays, and blazers.

Among the company’s documented products are the N-1 Deck Jacket, made from crossgrain cotton with alpaca fleece lining, and the Buco J-22 Leather Jacket, produced from vegetable-tanned horsehide and lined with houndstooth wool. The brand also makes the Lot. 003 Jeans, based on the late 1940s Levi's 501 pattern, and the Joe McCoy Ball Park Sweatshirt, sewn on vintage machines in Wakayama, Japan.