The denimwear that proves it pays to look beyond the obvious.

Want people to think you know what you’re talking about? When making an arbitrary decision, never go for The Obvious Choice. For the purpose of this article, we’ll call this method the “Aston Villa principle”, in that it goes some way to explain the celebrity fanbase, which includes Messrs Tom Hanks, David Cameron and Prince William, that the second-tier English football team enjoys. At the start of the season, when all of the clubs are arranged in alphabetical order (and when Aston Villa was still in the Premier League), it was the club that sat second on the list, just below Arsenal.

Top of the table and likely to stay up there abouts, playing the beautiful game and residing in fashionable north London, with its single-origin coffee shops and easy availability of all the ingredients you need to cook a recipe by Mr Yotam Ottolenghi, Arsenal presented The Obvious Choice. Therefore, it’s not the team that Mr Cameron and Prince William in particular, hoping to give off man-of-the-people vibes, would want to associate themselves with.

Avoiding TOC, then, is just something you need to do should you want to appear to be a well-rounded, culturally engaged man of depth. Not just in terms of football – the rule can be implemented in most social situations. Indeed, legend has it that much of the restaurant industry relies on the predictability that men will stick to the Aston Villa option; the second-cheapest item on the wine list is often rigged to be the one with the highest profit margin.

But what has all of this got to do with Kapital’s new collaboration with the estate of Mr Bob Marley? We’re glad you asked. The cult Japanese denim brand might be best known for its take on American workwear, often employing its own traditional native methods, such as boro patchworking. But for its SS19 collection, the label has fixed its steely-eyed focus on a fellow island nation some 700 miles south of the Florida Keys: Jamaica.

Under the stewardship of Mr Marley’s daughter Ms Cedella Marley and grandson Mr Skip Marley, the pieces showcased here have been made to reflect not just the legendary reggae artist himself, but also his Rastafari belief system and his homeland. Vibrant gold, green and red tones borrowed from the Jamaican flag are colour-blocked across the capsule, along with specially designed patches featuring dubplates, tour dates and a “natty” lion.

When approaching the collection, Kapital designer Mr Kiro Hirata decided to put his weight behind one album from Mr Marley’s considerable back catalogue to tie it all together. And, given that this is a brand renowned for its near-impossible attention to detail, a deep dive was to be expected.

So then, to return to our original premise on avoiding The Obvious Choice, this collection has swerved Exodus, the 1977 record to furnish Mr Marley’s best-of Legend with the greatest number of hits. But neither has it gone for Catch A Fire, The Wailers’ first album for Island Records and the band’s international breakthrough – the Aston Villa option in this situation.

Rather, it has singled out Talkin’ Blues, a sort of live record, released a decade after the singer died. This is so removed from The Obvious Choice that we’re unsure of the exact Football League equivalent. We suspect this is akin to supporting either Milton Keynes Dons or the Harry’s Heroes England team.

Talkin’ Blues is itself an interesting curio. A compilation spliced together from an intimate 1973 radio performance, a 1975 live show and studio jams, the songs are intercut with a patchwork of interviews recorded by Jamaican radio stations – aural boro, if you will. And here you can see the appeal for a brand such as Kapital. In aesthetics, this album is almost a bootleg, but with a genuine stamp of approval. It curates seemingly lost artefacts into a surprisingly coherent piece. What we will also add is that, thanks to Mr Marley’s thick accent, what he actually says between the songs is often impenetrable to unfamiliar ears, certainly on the first listen.

Then again, there is a better way to understand the singer: “If you want to get to know me, you will have to play football against me and the Wailers,” he once told a journalist. And for what it’s worth, Mr Marley supported Tottenham Hotspur.

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