chicote

Outfit from @roomtemplacroix’s closet clean out… truly so grateful for this, I think I might truly be set for life for denim, at least until my metabolism slows down. thank u again ryan!!! MF tee warehouse 1003xx duke belt lofgren boots

Cool tie @CSL!!

@MJF9 these 129s are my third pair of tenders; i started with a pair of 132s that i wore alongside my sugar canes when I lived in Ecuador. They were great for being up in the mountains, hiking, doing construction, and looked sharp in the city, especially alongside the irregular and extravagant denim styles popular in a lot of Latin America, but at the time I had closer to a 28” waist and they were just way too big. After a year of somewhat frequent wear they’d hardly faded and I ended up giving them to a friend who’s a motorcycle mechanic in eastern Oregon. Last I’d seen, they were all thrashed and patched up, he loved them. So, anecdotal point 1 was those 132s fading extremely stubbornly. The earlier comparison made to SDA denim feels apt, I’d say, given how those are known to fade very slowly. My second pair were the 128s, those are the ones with square patch pockets on the front and back, and no yoke, hence a very short rise. I wore those about 6 months before deciding they were just too low-rise for me to wear comfortably. I ended up cannibalizing them to make a weird pair of overalls that never fully got there, lol… not sure what I was thinking really, but anyway, they live on in my scrap pile so you can see a comparison with the 129s below. Lastly came the 129s, and I’m really not sure how much wear I’ve put into them, but probably close to or slightly over 2 years. They’ve been put through a lot; I wore them from 2018 thru the first half of 2020 while working in an auto garage and at a powder coating factory, alongside tattooing, so they got put through the ringer daily and were washed at least once every couple weeks. Despite that regimen, they have held up beautifully, besides the aforementioned stitching issues, and the fabric is just something else. Heavy washing does it a lot of good; the texture this pair achieved is hands down my favourite of any pair I’ve owned in 10+ years of being into this hobby. Anyway, here are some quick comparison pics of the 128s and 129s:

That’s a really great fit and looks like it worked out well to size up. Stevensons break in pretty quickly in my experience, I bet they’ll be settled nicely soon. Hope the move goes well!

@oomslokop woww those look amazing! i really see the similarities between the two fabrics. sdas seem under appreciated nowadays but that denim fades beautifully and seems to be holding up really well too. what were u painting?

@oomslokop Definitely tender denim is my all time favourite, and now that you mention it it is pretty similar to the sda 103s i used to have, which even had a blue selvedge ID just like the tenders. I used to get jeans specifically for the denim which is how I ended up w these three pairs in particular, plus the twisted-weft hemp fabric on the red clouds, but now fit and durability have become my main priorities and sadly the options aren’t always quite as interesting. tender denim or any of the 50% sugarcane denims, for example, those are the kind of fabrics that put you in a trance. but the sugarcane fabric got so thin that it’s started shredding at the thighs, and the real weak point of the tenders is the stitching… which although its part of the philosophy of the brand n i wouldn’t want william to change it, it’s started feeling incongruous having this monstrous 17oz denim with all cotton stitching, n trying to force the split yoke thru my sewing machine for the 3rd time when the fabric itself is hardly worn at all made me realize sadly they might not be the best-constructed jeans for my application. but u asked about the fabric and I def agree with u that tender stands alone in that regard.

Pulled these all out of the repair pile, resting alongside their fallen comrades (tender 128s, Stevenson 767, red cloud r400h) who have all been too shredded and/or used for patches… left to right: tcb 40s, sugar cane 40601 “slack denim”, tender 129s. All great pairs of jeans. may I hopefully get around to fixing and wearing them in more, though they’re all in a similar state of needing new repairs every other wear…

Agreed, that’s a really nice buckle, and great colour choice on the leather too.