30 December 2008

Oh! It's another one of these pictures. I am so pokey to get a jeans to take shape, but they are coming along.

19 December 2008 -- one month

Since I didn't start wearing these until around the middle of November, I guess it's safe to call these the "one month" pictures, with a few things to note.









These pictures were taken with yet another different camera (I went through two during the previous year of denim documentation!) This time around, it is a Canon Powershot Pro 1. I hate digital cameras! I can never seem to get acquainted with the settings on any given digital camera, so these pictures look like one big unbalanced, shadowy mess (to me, anyhow.)








Also, the creased lines going down the length of the leg are a result of running these through the dryer for their initial shrink-to-fit wash & dry. If these don't wear themselves out soon, I'll likely be soaking the jeans to get rid of them.

16 December 2008

Hey! Don't mind these posts. Since there isn't a whole lot of progression going on just yet, I've been taking periodic pictures to evaluate how the fit is coming along. So far, I've been going on my little bike trips in them, as well as some skateboarding in the past few weeks.





I think tomorrow will be an appropriate day for some taken-outdoors pictures. Perhaps!

20,November.

Happy 20,November. In the off-chance that any Japanese ever read this, I think they'll be the only ones to get that little reference... and even still, only a handful of them will get it! Oh gosh. It's a bemani reference. Okay!


About a month has elapsed since purchasing these jeans, and I've had very few opportunities to wear them! I'm starting to love the shape they are taking -- they've had maybe a week's worth of wear up to this point. With this pair I decided to experiment with cuffing, thinking it would simulate the benefits of having them hemmed (so they'd fall on the leg better,) but this left me with some severe kneebagging. I've decided to just let them fall as they may, with no cuffs. Here is how they fit now -- outdoor detail shots will begin in a month or two, once some real progress is made.

Post Soak.

A comparison of before and after -- how the jeans fit before touching water, and how they fit following a hot wash and a hot dry cycle.

Samurai 710XX 19 oz.

Now that the Skull Jeans 5010XX 6X6 contest is over, I've moved onto a new pair of jeans to break in. For a long time, I've been interested in Samurai's work. Samurai is a brand hailing from Osaka, Japan, and are yet another Japanese denim brand who are greatly influenced by the history of Levi's.



This particular cut -- Samurai's 710XX -- is a slim-fitting Japanese selvage jean made of 19-ounce shrink-to-fit denim. To appropriate the weight of the fabric in these jeans, the average pair of Levi's made today weigh in at 11.5 ounces. Wrangler's "heavy duty" cowboy jeans weigh 12 ounces. Most Japanese-made selvage jeans weigh between 14 ounces and 17 ounces, and are significantly more rugged in their raw state. 19-ounce denim packs in even more weight, actually straining the shuttle looms used to weave the cotton into denim.





Other features of the jeans include iron buttons, hand-punched copper rivets, a cowhide leather patch, and a silver selvage outseam & coin pocket. The single strand of silver lame thread sewn throughout the selvage seam is lovingly referred to by Samurai as "sword selvage," meant to represent the samurai sword. The color strand in selvage originates in the early 1900s from Cone Mills, who produced selvage denim for a majority of denim companies at the time. Levi's were recognized with a red-colored strand in the selvage line, while Lee utilized yellow, and Wrangler adopted both green and white.





Finally, being shrink-to-fit denim, they fit like what are essentially "hammer pants" prior to the first hot wash. Shrinkage is estimated at two inches in the waist, half of an inch in the leg, and two inches in the length. Right now, they are drying outside on the balcony.