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.