The Flat Head

[Cold Summer]

Nice fit! The well aged TFH plate buckle belt is a nice touch too. I'm sure we'll see some great evo from this denim.

I'll post an update soon on my older pair of 3005s which is well past 1.5 years of wear, and probably my most worn jeans at this point.

[youngofthesoonest]

yeah this denim seems like it'll fade with a decent amount of contrast. I'm already getting some lighter blues on the knees and backpackers. This belt is so beefy. it's the only belt I've had where the leather has not really stretched even though it's been my main belt for years. 

[Broark]

I tried a pair of the FN-D111's on yesterday, shocked at how much different they feel compared to old FH jeans.
Hardware feels pretty much the same, but the front pockets are actually usable!
I really don't need another pair of jeans but they're tempting.

[beautiful_FrEaK]

@Broark did you cave in already? 😉

[Broark]

2 minutes ago, beautiful_FrEaK said:

@Broark did you cave in already? 😉

No not yet. I'm trying to hold out!

[JohnM]

We all need a 12-step program, though I prefer the 12-enabler program.

[julian-wolf]

Picked up these 4005C recently for a good price

Can’t find much info on them, but I guess they’re a different fabric (LHT with a brown, maybe plant dyed warp and a dark weft) version of the 3005C from around 2004–2006. Classic mid-‘50s detailing with a zipper fly, and of course the old editable arcs

These have clearly been worn an okay amount based on the lightening around the seat & thighs, but there’s no noticeable damage of any sort, and if I were just looking at the hems, seams, tags, & patch I’d guess that they’d never (or very seldom) been washed

The fit’s good, a little on the slim end but still within the range of what I’ve been enjoying wearing recently. I’ll post some fits at some point. Overall, pretty excited for these

 

[chicote]

Wow that weft colour is really cool

[youngofthesoonest]

whoa, I've never seen this fabric from FH. very cool. you're right...the wear on the thighs looks like there was a decent amount of wear but everything else looks like it was pretty unworn. 

[Cold Summer]

I think I've seen these before, but I never looked into the details beyond that. Very cool looking, that fabric has a unique vibe!

[Cold Summer]

Posted an update of my 3005XXX jeans in the Evo thread, check it out.

I also started wearing the 1005s I got about a year ago. 

Compared to my 3005s in the same tag size 32, these are slightly more relaxed, which I like. After a warm wash with other denim laundry, the inseam shrank from almost 38" down to 35", making these quite pleasantly long with some modest stacking for some Dad Fit vibes overall. This is the first pair I've begun wearing since I stopped cuffing my jeans and putting wallets or other stuff in the back pockets, so it'll be nice to see a little different evo on these compared to my past pairs. Very comfy jeans from day one, thanks to the fit.

Back in 2013-14 I wore the 1001, so I have some familiarity with the 16 oz denim. It's imperceptibly heavier than TFH's usual 14.5, but it feels like a slightly looser/stretchier weave, and has a slightly rougher hand. In my experience with the 1001, I felt that this 16 oz denim aged much faster than the 14.5 oz, which is one of the slower-fading fabrics out there unless you're wearing your jeans super tight like in SuFu's late 2000s heyday. I got great fades out of my 1001 despite a fairly frequent washing schedule of every other month. With this pair, I'll probably hold off as long as I can before the first wash for some rather different evo.

Otherwise, the main things that stand out with this pair is that the back pockets are larger than other TFH jeans, giving a slightly different impression; and the front pocket openings are also larger, making this the easiest TFH pair for me to fit my hands into. Unlike my second pair of 3005s, these don't have the double poly-cotton/cotton stitching on the front pocket openings and back pocket edges, so we'll see how long that stitching lasts. For what it's worth, in the nine months of wear I put into my 1001s, the back pocket edge stitching didn't break at all.

Edited October 23 by Cold Summer

[Cold Summer]

My 1001s, from back in 2014:

And a grail-level pair of 1005s I photographed at TFH headquarters back in 2013:

Edited October 23 by Cold Summer

[1fookntitefd]

I need to get another pair of TFH now. Time to go visit SESF

[Cold Summer]

Here’s my other pair of 3005, my main jeans at the moment. I think these have been worn about ten months. Washed three times. 
 

[beautiful_FrEaK]

Good stuff Kyle!

[indigoeagle]

Does anyone know the difference between the current (I think) FN-3005 (with the bandana) with the dosha buri suffix and the FN-3500 N1 XXX?
The first one has this patch


and the second one this



The first one has lemon coloured arcs and both lemon and tobacco stitching, the arcs on the N1XXX are in tobacco and the stitching looks to me like tobacco and light tobacco.
Also the first is O/W and the second N/W.

Is the denim the same?
The cut?

Any experience how much the N1XXX will shrink?

I've got the first one here in 36 and 38. I find they fit rather small. It took a bit of effort to close the 36. Also not much space in the thighs.
I find both denims very nice.
The first O/W a bit fuzzy, quite dark, some thicker warps already visible.
For the stated 14.5 oz quite comfy.

The N/W is a bit ligher, blue greyish. Not sure, if it will the same as the other after a wash.

Edited October 28 by indigoeagle

[Cold Summer]

I'm pretty sure those are almost the same and just minor seasonal tweaks/variations, since things like thread color can vary. TFH has been using the "FN" prefix for everything since they reorganized a few years ago. "XXX" connotes the overseas version of their jeans which has the F-stitch rather than the "Levis"-esque arcs on the JDM 3000 series jeans.

For instance, I have two pairs of 3005s, one a 3005XXX bought from Self Edge, the other 3005s a JDM model from 2014. They have different stitch colors and patches, but the denim and cut are the same.

It's hard to compare from those two pics because the lighting and such is totally different. They have the exact same patch, it just looks different due to the light, and it's hard for me to say if the denim is different. That being said, I've never seen the "FN-3005 N1 XXX" before so I'm not sure what exactly "N1" indicates, whether it's an actual difference or just a slight, seasonal variation of the product name.

[indigoeagle]

3 hours ago, Cold Summer said:

I'm pretty sure those are almost the same and just minor seasonal tweaks/variations,

What about the "dosha buri"?
Do you think it's the same Pioneer denim- which has always been famous for vertical fading -and they want to stress this or has the denim been reformulated so to speak in order to amplify this effect?

[Cold Summer]

Not sure. I've seen that phrase "doshaburi" on Flat Head's social media but I think it's some sort of slogan rather than a description of any objective aspect of their jeans.

I've seen some people say that Flat Head's 14.5 oz. denim has changed, but I haven't handled any TFH jeans from the reorganized/revived version of TFH so I actually don't know how it differs from the "old" denim, if at all. I'd have to defer with somebody with hands-on experience.

I really regret popularizing the terminology of calling it the "Pioneer" denim way back when. Before <10 years ago everyone called it "3XXX", which I found to be an eyesore and disliked (Plus, how do you even say that? "three ex-ex-ex"?) Long ago on TFH's site (and other retailer sites in Japan), the 3000-series jeans were called the "Pioneer" series, to differentiate from the "Frontier" series consisting of the F310, F380, and a couple more obscure models like the F370 and F350. But it's not even a good descriptor since both the "Pioneer" and "Frontier" lines actually used the same denim, and TFH stopped using Pioneer/Frontier terminology a long time ago, AND many TFH jeans that didn't even start with the "3" used that denim, too. Nowadays, I just call the 14.5 oz their usual/signature denim, for whatever that's worth.

Kind of an off-topic rant, but something that's been on my mind lately.

Edited October 29 by Cold Summer

[indigoeagle]

5 minutes ago, Cold Summer said:

 But it's not even a good descriptor since both the "Pioneer" and "Frontier" lines actually used the same denim, and TFH stopped using Pioneer/Frontier terminology a long time ago, AND many TFH jeans that didn't even start with the "3" used that denim, too. Nowadays, I just call the 14.5 oz their usual/signature denim, for whatever that's worth.

Interesting.
So for the 14.5oz it's basically all the same denim.
And that would be Texas cotton, right? Like stated here

For the newer wider models (FN D 110, 111, 112) it says Zimbabwean cotton here and also here.
And Selfedge states that the model D111 is left hand twill.
All the D11.versions have the suffix XXX on the patch.
 

[Cold Summer]

That's right, the D11... jeans are the Zimbabwe cotton denim which is completely different from the 3000-series. I haven't handled this denim personally, but it seems nice.

I like that Flat Head only has a couple of great denim fabrics, as opposed to other prominent brands that constantly churn out new, and in my opinion rather gimmicky, denim. TFH used to make 12, 16, 18, 19, and 20 oz denim, plus some others (anybody else remember the Kevlar blend denim?!) but most of them were just slight variations on the usual 14.5 oz fabric with heavier weights, and maybe slight changes to the weave. They all looked like TFH denim, for better or worse.

This rather conservative approach to their denim may have contributed to the decline of TFH's prominence in the international denim fan community, but when your core denim is as good as Flat Head's, I really don't think it's a problem. It has a refinement I find lacking in a lot of trendier brands' exaggerated fabrics. 

Actually, I now quite like the old 5000-series fabric TFH used to make in their 2000s heyday, similar to the 14.5 with a strong vertical fade, but slightly lighter weight at 14 oz and lighter color with fewer dips than the 14.5. I wouldn't mind if they brought that one back.