Full Count Denim Thread

[reallypeacedoff]

2 minutes ago, beautiful_FrEaK said:

Next year's edition: the sewing machines are still attached as well!

After a few years of wear, the threads turn into dreadlocks.

[Dr_Heech]

The jacket looks like someone went a bit mad with the silly string 😅

 

 

Edited October 22 by Dr_Heech

[Mtvare]

Those are ridiculous. The curtain pulls on the fly take the biscuit. It actually looks like that's how you're supposed to undo them.

[Broark]

I feel like this take on WWII models is starting to get a little lazy.
"Boss, how are we going to make our WWII jeans stand out from the competition?"
Miki-san: "Oh I've got it, just leave about 3 inches of runoff at every possible sewing point!"

[Maynard Friedman]

I’d like to see a few extra rivets dotted around in places they shouldn’t be - and maybe an additional pocket randomly located. Those amateur wartime seamstresses! 😡 

[yung_flynn]

2 hours ago, jkbrwn said:

https://bears-tokyo.myshopify.com/products/reservation-page-scheduled-to-ship-on-10-25-full-count-s2107w-24-ww2-model-brown-cotton-denim-pants?variant=41873209196603

https://bears-tokyo.myshopify.com/products/reservation-page-scheduled-for-shipping-on-10-25-full-count-s2107w-2-1ww2-model-brown-cotton-denim-jacket

The extent of the loose threads made me laugh.

I read the subsequent comments first and still had a good chuckle when I opened the link.

I honestly can't decide if they're a winking self-parody or taking wonky self-seriousness to its extreme.

 

Edited October 22 by yung_flynn

[jkbrwn]

9 minutes ago, yung_flynn said:

I read the subsequent comments first and still had a good chuckle when I opened the link.

I honestly can't decide if they're a winking self-parody or taking wonky self-seriousness to its extreme.

 

I wanna say they don't look as insane in SOAS's photos. But I can't help but feel they may have given them a bit of a trim, ha.

 

 

 

[okimoto]

I thought SC went overboard with the Super Collectibles - this FC jacket really takes the cake. I wonder if we'll see any worn examples with the threads still attached

[Ciabatta]

Bombs were literally HITTING the factory but they just HAD to get the jackets done! No time for trimming!!!

[Talan]

As long as there are no holes in the garments and the seams are strong, I don’t see any major issues. Loose threads can be trimmed, or you can wear them as is if someone likes that. I’d prefer the former. I won’t buy these myself; I still have two pairs of FC from previous years that I’ve barely started wearing. I am a slow wearer.

[AlientoyWorkmachine]

I won’t lie the brown cotton is quite appealing to me. The spaghetti look definitely is not, I wish I knew if it was an attempt to be absurd and cheeky. Intent matters! Ha. I hope it is - same with the ridiculous Levi’s tag they got sued for. What is Miki-San on these days? 

If this is a genuine attempt to cash in on this look then the longer the excess thread, the shorter the garments are on dignity, and by extension, the brand…which I’ll concede is already an appropriate question. But I could trim those threads, because I’ve wanted some unbleached cotton weft in my life quite a bit. And I know I like these cuts.

Oh what to do. 

[Maynard Friedman]

This has become the Full Count Denim Thread Thread.

[indigoeagle]

14 minutes ago, AlientoyWorkmachine said:

I won’t lie the brown cotton is quite appealing to me. The spaghetti look definitely is not, I wish I knew if it was an attempt to be absurd and cheeky. Intent matters! Ha. I hope it is - same with the ridiculous Levi’s tag they got sued for. What is Miki-San on these days?

I also find the brown cotton very interesting.
On the Mushman blog there is an interesting write up on the set up.
Apparently the jacket fits a size bigger, but for the pants due to the higher rise he recommends to size up.
He is also selling them in non/wash but recommends to customers to try on the washed versions he has in his shop.

I'm wondering, if the brownish cotton is a different breed or whether the white is simply the brown one bleached. And that step was omitted during the war.

Edited October 23 by indigoeagle

[reallypeacedoff]

On 10/22/2024 at 10:38 AM, jkbrwn said:

I wanna say they don't look as insane in SOAS's photos. But I can't help but feel they may have given them a bit of a trim, ha.

I purchased one this morning from Bears so will report back on the silly string. Both FC and SoaS show a lot less than Bears. Will trim mine to look similar to the above. 

[space_cowboy]

I've been wearing my 0105ss' (size 33 purchased from Bears) for the past couple of weeks and the waist has stretched out quite a lot. I was curious to see how a 32 would fit me and since Bears was sold out, I purchased a size 32 from Rodeo Bros. I figured I'd just sell whatever pair I didn't end up choosing.

 

When I first got my 33's from Bears, I noticed the leather patch was hard as a rock, truly super stiff, and crinkly. I thought, hmm they must have a pretty aggressive factory wash. They were lots of hard creases  throughout the fabric everywhere as well, like someone washed and tumble dried them on hot. Minus the patch, I figured any creases would come out with another wash, and not handling any FC denim before, I thought this was maybe the norm for jeans with their one wash treatment.

 

I got the 32's from Rodeo Bros yesterday and I was a little surprised at the difference. The patch is very supple, no visible creases anywhere, and even the hand feel is slightly different, perhaps slightly more rigid. 

 

I'm not upset or anything, I just think it's interesting. Is it possible Bears did an additional wash to try and squeeze out any further shrinkage? Or perhaps it was returned by a customer who did their own wash, but then that means they would of had to attach the pocket flasher and tags? Curious to know if anyone else has experienced this. 

Edited October 31 by space_cowboy

[Alec Leamas]

@space_cowboy just to add further intrigue, but also to possibly solve the mystery, those 2 pairs are different inseam lengths! (something I actually didn't know FC did!!)...so they likely will be from two different production runs.

All FC jeans are one-wash processed now, or mostly anyway, so I imagine it's hard to control the outcome of that. Sticking a tonne of pairs of jeans into an industrial washer and washing and spinning them must produce a really wide variety of outcomes.

I admit though that is a drastic difference! My 0105s came with a patch more like your top example there.

[reallypeacedoff]

50 minutes ago, space_cowboy said:

Is it possible Bears did an additional wash to try and squeeze out any further shrinkage? 

I have been to BEARS, and that place is so packed with jeans that you can barely fit in there. There is no way they are doing any additional washing. 

As @Alec Leamas said, I would imagine you got a pair that was sitting on the heating element (mostly), and the other pair was probably protected by a few pairs in the dryer. When I was at Fullcount in Tokyo, I noticed that each patch was different too, didn't really think about it until then but I'd imagine that's why.

[beautiful_FrEaK]

@Alec Leamas different waist sizes come with different inseam length.

W32 to W33 is the size where it changes.

[space_cowboy]

@Alec Leamas @reallypeacedoff Makes sense! Interesting to see the different results.

 

@beautiful_FrEaK That was another reason why I wanted to try the 32! The factory hem has such beautiful roping already, I wanted to see if I can get by without hemming additional length, but alas, I think I would need to get them hemmed if I stick with the 32. Why aren't all union special hems created equal?

Edited October 31 by space_cowboy

[Maynard Friedman]

My older style Full Counts are all W31 L34, none have or had a 32L.

[beautiful_FrEaK]

Because old FC were L34 and L36

[Alec Leamas]

14 hours ago, space_cowboy said:

@Alec Leamas @reallypeacedoff Makes sense! Interesting to see the different results.

 

@beautiful_FrEaK That was another reason why I wanted to try the 32! The factory hem has such beautiful roping already, I wanted to see if I can get by without hemming additional length, but alas, I think I would need to get them hemmed if I stick with the 32. Why aren't all union special hems created equal?

For what it's worth, and this is probably not much now given you already have them in hand - Full Count hem pairs bought direct from them and their hemming matches the factory hems very closely.

 

@beautiful_FrEaK I did not know that! Thank you for the info!

[tooth]

19 hours ago, space_cowboy said:

Why aren't all union special hems created equal?

Not sure if this is a rhetorical question, but it’s because the person setting up the machine has control over the width of the hem.

There’s a shop in the town I live in that hems with a union special and they say they set their width to match Levi’s from such and such year (I forget what year / era in particular). The setting is a bit wide and in turn doesn’t provide as much tension so the roping, while still nice, is more open with larger spacing between the ‘ropes’. I prefer a tighter hem with closer ropes, which is how all the factory FC pairs (along with other factory hems from other makers) I’ve had have been.

I’ve figured that having a wider hem setting on the machine allows for more lenience as the person hemming is working with more material and in turn is a bit easier to work, but this is all conjecture on my part as I’ve never hemmed anything. 

[Alec Leamas]

@tooth I've reflected on and obsessed over this for an undue amount of time given how little time I've actually been invested in repro denim / Americana / MiJ stuff in general.

To the point though now that I know what I like and where to get that - and it's always direct from the makers of the jeans themselves, either the factory hem or the hemming provided by the maker of the jeans when ordering. The best examples of this being Fullcount and Warehouse. I've found that the hems I have had from other places, while still good, have not been rolled as tight, or at that goldilocks width.

Having had what I see as the perfect hem, it's hard to be satisfied with anything else.

[nick682]

1 hour ago, Alec Leamas said:

@tooth I've reflected on and obsessed over this for an undue amount of time given how little time I've actually been invested in repro denim / Americana / MiJ stuff in general.

To the point though now that I know what I like and where to get that - and it's always direct from the makers of the jeans themselves, either the factory hem or the hemming provided by the maker of the jeans when ordering. The best examples of this being Fullcount and Warehouse. I've found that the hems I have had from other places, while still good, have not been rolled as tight, or at that goldilocks width.

Having had what I see as the perfect hem, it's hard to be satisfied with anything else.

I'm glad I'm not the only one that is so particular about the hem of jeans.  Fullcount and Warehouse factory hems are also my favorites - I wish there was someone would could replicate those because they would have my business. I had a pair of Roys hemmed at a shop and the hem width is pretty large and the roping looks awful... I'll have to snap a pic sometime.

[willi]

I have hem OCD, and the stage I've reached is that I just leave the hemming to the manufacturer and wear the jeans at whatever length they arrive. Any after wash hemming is going to drive me nuts, but if it arrives a certain way I can accept the hand of god.

Edited November 1 by willi

[bod]

Back when the £-$ exchange rate was still decent I used to send my jeans to Blue in Green for hemming, they had the perfect sized folder on their Union Special something like 10mm? nice and small and great tension for insane roping 

[Cold Summer]

Interesting discussion on the hemming. My FC 1108s did have a nice, narrow hem width. Ditto for my WH 1001xx, maybe my favorite narrow hem ever.

However, the hem on my WH 800xx was different, and maybe the thickest width of any of the Japanese repro jeans I've had. It's similar to the hem on my TFH 3005, etc. But the TFH denim and WH 800xx denim is 14.5 oz, so I think the heavier weight is probably why the hem is a bit thicker on those. In other words, if you like that really clean, narrow hem, 14 oz or lighter denim is more likely to have it.

Being quite a tall fellow myself, I almost never need my jeans hemmed. The only pair that really needed it were my Samura S710xx. I wore the factory hem for probably about 4-6 months, before I had them hemmed at a Flat Head Dessert Hills Market store in Ueda, Nagano in 2013. To my surprise, this new hem had a ton of roping, even though the denim had long since fully shrunk before that. This made me wonder if there was something about that particular 43200G machine (or maybe just the inexperience of my coworker, who was working at the store that day and operated the machine, clearly having a hard time hemming the 19 oz denim.)

[Alec Leamas]

Interesting to hear everyone’s views. And reassuring to hear the level of obsession throughout. 

@bod this is intriguing, I shall make a note of them and potentially use in future.

@willi I’m way too short to go the same route. And with the obsession with the hem comes the need to have it on show, either uncuffed completely, or cuffed once.

Another perfect example would be TCB, they’ve got it 100% nailed. From my somewhat basic research (and hours of obsession), I believe it to be a combination of the size of the folder on the machine, and how well the machine is actually maintained and run. I think with Inoue san having worked on the machines for so many years, TCB’s are very well “tuned” (please excuse the non expert terminology!!)

This is getting way off thread topic sorry mods!

[Alec Leamas]

2 hours ago, nick682 said:

I'm glad I'm not the only one that is so particular about the hem of jeans.  Fullcount and Warehouse factory hems are also my favorites - I wish there was someone would could replicate those because they would have my business. I had a pair of Roys hemmed at a shop and the hem width is pretty large and the roping looks awful... I'll have to snap a pic sometime.

Quite right! If we can collectively find the shop with the Goldilocks hem, they would have a tonne of business from us no?!

Answers (and photographic evidence!!) on a postcard please!