Cold Summer

I've been burned on UES sizing proportions too many times to be particularly inclined to try them again. But Deluxeware looks great, I forgot all about them but they have some nice looking thermals with measurements that seem good to me, and a nice price too. Great suggestion!

I'm looking to add a few thermal tees for fall/winter layering. They should be long sleeve, all cotton, medium weight, have decently long sleeves for my long arms, and not absurdly expensive. I tried on an Iron Heart thermal at my local retailer at the start of the year and liked it a lot, but it was maybe a bit bulkier than I wanted, and I balked at the price tag. It doesn't need to be by a premium/made-in-Japan brand even, but I would like something all cotton with no synthetic fibers, which likely rules out cheaper options like Uniqlo.

It's Samurai trying to "protect" overseas retailers from being undercut by buying from Japan for far less than the crazy markups. We've seen this kind of thing happen before, notable with Pure Blue Japan a few years ago where they dumped retailers like Okayama Denim and Denimio, probably due to protests from overseas specialty shops. But I've never heard of any brand just not allowing any Japanese retailers to list on Rakuten at all, it's hard to imagine they could actually enforce that since it'd undercut domestic sales for stores to have no online listings at all for a brand like Samurai. That's putting out a fire by bombing the whole building. The postscript saying to email them if you can't find a product on their site you're looking for, wink and a nod, suggests that they want you to just contact them directly and you'll still be able to buy that way. Warning: rant/spicy commentary incoming! I kind of understand both sides on this issue, but since personally I'm mostly buying deadstock or used clothes off Japanese sites like Yahoo Auctions or Mercari for a fraction of the price of comparable new items from an American retailer, I don't really care at this point. At this stage in life I'm unable, or at least unwilling, to summon the cash to pay the bonkers US retailer prices of new items by Japanese heritage brands, so I try to make my buck go as far as it can buying straight from Japanese secondhand sites. Some things, like sweatshirts or tees, I absolutely prefer to buy in person and don't mind a little markup in exchange for knowing I like the fit and fabric. But with jeans, it's easy for me to buy sight unseen and know what I'm getting if measurements are posted. As an added bonus you often find older versions of jeans, etc. with discontinued features like arcs and tabs on auction sites, which in the case of brands like Samurai is nice since the "old" versions are more distinct than the watered-down, more export-oriented design. Lots of other brands (like Full Count) have done this over the past few years and it always seems to correlate with a dilution of the brand's identity as well as hiked-up prices where you pay more cash for a more generic jean. Back in the day brands like Flat Head and Iron Heart responded to the Levi's lawsuit by revamping their products to have a more unique, less Levis-ripoff-y identity, but in recent years the trend seems to be just eliminating anything that makes a brand stand out from other plain featureless repro jeans.

Looking good, I like that 47 fit a lot.

I don't think that would be bad, as long as variation was pretty much limited to fit. For instance, a straight leg model, and a more relaxed straight leg model for thicker folks. But you'd want the details, denim, and so on to be the same. Very true. The problem is that since the mid-late 2000s SuFu heyday, internet forums as a basis for hobby communities have basically died, and it's relatively old-timers (generally born in the 1980s or earlier), whose formative Internet experience predates the 2005-2009 social media boom, who continue to use them. I think this is a real shame as forum-based communities make it far easier to build a useful reference base of knowledge and continuity than their vastly-inferior corporate replacements such as Reddit and Discord, which emphasize flash-in-the-pan novelty and convenience over substance.

That makes sense. Having spent little time on motorcycles myself, that didn't occur to me. Am I the only one who's become rather disillusioned with the whole concept of denim contests? I like the updates from SuFu posters in the Indigo Invitational contest. But the way these contests have gone for the last ten years or so, they increasingly feel like a cartoonish caricature encouraging the worst aspects of denim enthusiast culture, which I'm increasingly uninterested in perpetuating. I've had the idea of saving this pair or that for a future contest but I feel like I'm not even going to bother, and just wear whenever I feel like it. I'm pretty disciplined about focusing on one pair at a time so I don't need a contest to help me actually fade something, which seems to be a common motivation. And I've already got all the cool clothing I'll ever need so prizes don't matter much to me. The problem is that the contest itself seems to motivate and incentivize weird behavior from entrants in an attempt to win, rather than just wearing the denim naturally and seeing how it turns out. On top of that, the free-for-all of different brands, fits, denim weights, and so on makes it hard to have any objective comparison or evaluation. The most interesting contests I've seen were those where everybody wore the same model of jeans, like the SuFu Samurai contest from back in the day.

Did he starch his jacket, roll around in the mud, then hike the hem up to his armpits to make it scrunch up like that? I don't even understand what I'm looking at here, other than that his jacket looks really dirty and gross. I like high-contrast fades and often go long periods without washing my denim stuff, depending on the garment and season, but it never comes at the expense of basic dignity. If my jeans, jacket, etc. starts to look, feel, or smell dirty, I just wash it. There's plenty of room for individual expressiveness between the extremes of washing your jeans every time you wear them, and never washing even when they look obviously disgusting. It's one thing if this guy throws on his denim jacket to go to his 9-5 job working on a construction site... but I really doubt that's it.

Those look good. Inseam is really short, which is fine by me since I already have three discontinued deadstock TFH pairs waiting to be worn someday.

I’ve started wearing a small shoulder bag to keep my keys/phone/wallet/other EDC like the gentlemen of Japan do, so I was looking out for a simple, slim long wallet to replace my beefier denim nerd ones. I found this Porter Yoshida one used on Mercari for very cheap, and it’s just what I was looking for. Nice Italian veg tan leather with a lovely patina, neat sewing, made in Japan. Plenty of space for my stuff, but slim enough that I could keep it in a jacket breast pocket if I opt to leave the bag behind.

Nice work so far guys. I sat out this round to focus on some in-progress pairs, but I'll probably enter the next denim contest with my deadstock TFH 1005s.

I'm curious what changes happened with their Pioneer denim, I've owned a couple TFH things since they went bankrupt/reorganized, but the jeans, denim jackets, etc. I've bought were dead stock from auctions and such. I've looked at pictures on retailer sites of current models like the 3005 or 3009 and the denim looks the same as it always has, but I know pictures don't always tell the whole story.

This is the first time I've ever seen Eternal with a working website. Buckle back jeans look kinda cool.

Nice, I'm excited to see the new TFH gear. This summer I've been wearing my 3005s I got from Self Edge back in 2018, they're still going strong at around 1.5 years of real wear. Bummer about the 1001xx situation, but I can just repair mine and keep wearing, so it's not the end of the world.

Kiya, any idea if/when you'll restock the Warehouse 1001xx? I've worn tons and tons of jeans over the years and my 1001xx I got about three years ago is so close to being my absolute favorite pair, from the denim to fit to details, these are just the perfect vintage-style jean for me. My pair needs some repairs but they ought to have a ton of life left after that. Regardless, this is a jean I like so much that I'd just automatically buy them again if I could, but they've been sold out forever and only you guys sell a version long enough for me.

Finally got some pics of my BR chinos.

I got a new old car recently and I am loving it. Very low mileage, in excellent condition. 1996 Oldsmobile Ciera wagon.

It gets even more complicated when you consider that most people don't wear their jeans on their actual waist anymore, but on their hips. So a 31-32 size on a pair of jeans, even if it actually measures 31-32", really corresponds with where they sit on my hips, my actual waist being a bit smaller. Anyway, different topic, I've found the way I wear my jeans has changed in recent times. I've been wearing them uncuffed for a few reasons: I no longer care about showing off selvedge; it has a bit of a cleaner/less noisy/costume-y appearance; and maybe most of all, no more cleaning out dirty cuffs or expensive darning repairs on blown-out cuff lines. Although I still wash my jeans on what most would consider an infrequent basis and like to have some good contrast fading, I'm giving a lot more thought to overall longevity. I'm keeping my keys, wallet, phone in a Porter Yoshida shoulder bag of the sort you see guys wearing all the time in Japan, which means no annoying phone pocket fade, cleaner overall appearance, and avoiding pocket repairs caused by wallets. I started to feel like my appearance had gotten really complicated with the accessories, and I'm enjoying this simplified look of just jeans + belt at the visual center of my outfits. It's a bit more of a down-to-earth, low key look, which I suppose also suits me getting older and leaning into dadhood and all that.

I got the BR40025A in the Khaki color. They have a couple other colors but I like the classic khaki the best.

A few months ago I got the Buzz Rickson 1930s chinos. These are the best-fitting pants of any type I've ever worn, it's just perfect for my body type. The price, shipped from Japan, was also dirt cheap, and they seem well made and detailed. Highly recommended! I need to get around to snapping some pics.

I have both the 1001xx and 800xx, the Self Edge longer inseam version of both. I haven't noticed any shrinkage on the 1001xx over half a dozen washes or so. The 800xx do seem like they shrunk in length, and I'm not sure why that is. I didn't notice that until after having knee blowouts on the 800xx repaired though so it's possible that the darned knees not stretching out like before have some kind of negative effect on the inseam length. Either way, cold washing should be pretty safe, and you can always get some length back by pulling the legs when they're damp.

Yeah, serves me right for not looking more closely, not exactly Land Yacht... but a handsome vehicle from the era of peak US auto design, regardless.

Love the cars! I'm really into older cars, I recently picked up a mid 90s Oldsmobile wagon with low mileage in great condition, and just love it. Not nearly as old school as these cars of course, but the design dates from the mid-80s. I'd love to own a big ridiculous cozy mid-60s to mid-70s land yacht like the one in the first pic someday. I really like Oldsmobile, Buick, Mercury, the mid-level luxury American cars.

Nice fit on those b_F, leg break looks really good with no cuffs. I'd wear my jeans uncuffed if I could get them to look that good, hah.

Great stuff Ben! Fades look great and I agree, that size 42 tee fits you just right. I handled a lot of TFH tees back in the day, THC always felt heaviest but some of the others like the Black Mint tees also felt pretty hefty. I did have some much lighter weight TFH tees but they weren't part of the main recurring lines of T-shirts. I still haven't been to Guilty Party since they started carrying Flat Head, I'll probably stop by once they get another shipment. Still kind of surreal that I can take a short drive to a store that carries Flat Head, never thought I'd see the day.

I'm fortunate to have a job where I can dress however I want, and work from home 99% of the time, so I guess that helps. The last time I had a job where I had to wear "business casual" was ten years ago, and it was miserable, in that regard. I think heavyweight tees like Flat Head THC are perfect for places like California with a nice climate, but here in the sticky southeast US, I've found that heavy duty tees almost never feel comfortable to wear. It's funny to think back to summer 2013 when I was working at TFH and wearing thick tees every day in the warehouse, it wasn't too comfortable, hah. I like wearing a lightweight tee with an unbuttoned short sleeve (often from TFH!) on top. If I get hot, it's easy to remove a layer and cool down. Perhaps the real reason Ben has returned is that he was unhappy I was in the lead for the prestigious title of "most posts in the TFH thread"?