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The Raw Denim World’s Best-Kept Secret
These denim jeans we’re talking about today, built for Japanese bikers, are also considered to be the highest quality, most durable denim jeans on Earth – well, apparently, but also maybe not. These jeans are almost as thick as two pairs of Levis, which, by the way, Levis sued this brand in 2007. Anyway, super thick jeans, yet somehow people say they feel like sweatpants.
They are more detailed, more well thought out, and built to a higher standard than any other jeans. Of all of the expensive, rare, and weird jeans that I have reviewed over the past years, one brand has a cult following unlike any other. They have their own forum, their own club, and those incredibly tough, rebellious, and oftentimes dangerous people are people just like me.
That’s right, everybody – Michael Kristy, part of the Iron Heart denim Army as of today. The brand is, of course, Iron Heart, and Mr. Haraki, AKA Boss, runs it. I’ve never read an article, never seen a comment, never seen anybody talk about Iron Heart and Mr. Haraki without calling Mr. Haraki a genius. I’ve never heard of anybody else being called a genius as much as Mr. Haraki.
The Reddit Investigation
So I wanted to find out why, and I bought my first pair of Iron Hearts. So I made a secret Reddit account, and I went on to r/rawdenim, and I said, “Hey, fellow denim lovers, it’s me, us3rb0y346. I’m trying to figure out what’s so great about Iron Heart. Can anyone help me? Thanks.”
And I really expected people to start gushing and say, “You don’t understand how the denim is made, how the fabric is this, how this is that,” but they didn’t, and for the most part, they said, “Eh, nothing too crazy.”
Breaking Down What Makes Iron Heart Special
But after doing a ton of research, I believe them to be wrong. There is something very special about Iron Heart that we need to talk about today. Let’s get to it. Today’s agenda: number one, we’re looking at Iron Heart’s most famous jean ever, the first one, the 634S.
Number two, we’re going to go over every single feature of these jeans you may not expect to be in jeans that makes Iron Heart so legendary.
Number three, the Iron Heart fork in the road – people who think Iron Heart is brilliant, people who think it’s all hype. And finally, Iron Heart has a trick up their sleeve that nobody else has. So what is it, and why does it make them the greatest?
The 634s: A Game-Changing Design
The raw denim world rebirth movement, whatever you want to call it, that happened in Japan changed a lot since it first started, and Iron Heart was pivotal in one of the biggest changes in the world of raw denim.
This is Iron Heart’s original fit, the 634s. It’s timeless, it’s straight, it’s not super wide, but it’s wide enough you can wear it whenever and not look out of place, and I think it’s based on a pair of 1955 Levi’s.
But these jeans have all the fixings. One of them is my butt – the back pockets on Iron Heart jeans are wider than normal, and that’s so you can sit on your motorcycle without having your pockets feel weird and so you can reach your wallet a little bit easier.
Sorry, there’s one more butt-related thing – usually, on modern jeans, you don’t need hidden rivets anymore, but on Iron Heart jeans, you’ll see there are hidden rivets, and at the same time, the back pockets are also bar tacked, which gives us two layers of redundancy so your back pockets don’t rip off.
And then, of course, we have the legendary Iron Heart denim, the mythic magic denim that makes the beast. I can’t talk about it until we talk about a few other things, things to get up to speed, but when you put these jeans on, you definitely think, “Wow, these are some of the heaviest jeans that I’ve ever worn.”
They’re stiff but not crazy stiff. People say it feels like sweatpants when you put them on – I don’t know what type of sweatpants you are wearing, but it is comfy and soft on the inside. We’ll talk about that because that’s a very important thing that has to do with the denim.
The Japanese Denim Heritage: Meet the Osaka 5
You can’t deny that Mr. Haraki’s genius comes from the denim that he designed and then made. It is arguably some of the most important denim ever made in Japan.
Still, in order to truly understand that, we have to go back in time to the Osaka 5 – the original five raw Japanese selvedge denim brands that started it all, and then it will make more sense. Ready? Evisu, Full Count, Studio d’Artisan, Denime, and Warehouse. That is the Osaka 5, the originals.
However, there are two Japanese denim brands that are even more important to Japan than the Osaka 5. If the Osaka 5 are the kings and the royalty of raw Japanese selvedge denim, their parents or their grandparents, their mommies and daddies are Edwin and Big John. T
hey started Japanese denim in general in the 1940s. Each member of the Osaka 5 has their own thing, and they make denim in their own way – some are trying to recreate Levis from the past, others are just going super artsy fartsy like Evisu, but none of them did denim like Iron Heart did in 2003.
But none of them did denim like Iron Heart did in 2003. Mr. Haraki Boss, the guy who started Iron Heart, is a powerhouse in the world of Japanese denim. He started from the very roots as a pattern maker at Edwin and knows every single tiny little possible detail that goes into making a pair of jeans.
He didn’t go the traditional way that the Osaka 5 did with denim weights, how heavy, how stiff the denim is. He designed his denim for the Japanese motorcycle community and then built his jeans around that. But instead of focusing on vintage recreations of fabric, he focused on durability, beefiness, stiffness, and what goes into the motorcycle aesthetic of big heavy hogs.
The Iron Heart Revolution: 10 Game-Changing Features
With all that being said, here are the 10 things that I think make Iron Heart special and what differentiated it at the time:
Number one, Iron Heart’s signature denim came out of the gate super heavy, super hard, but not rough – it was still comfy to wear on your leg.
Two, the main thread on Iron Heart jeans is polycore thread, so the outside is cotton, and the inside is polyester. That means it still looks like it’s aging like cotton, but it’s much stronger because of the polyester core.
Three, although this was not on the first iteration of the 634s, the belt loops are now tucked into the waistband, which adds another layer of redundancy and strength.
Four, hidden rivets.
Five, I’m just going to quote this one for you: “On some jeans, we use 13 different types of threads per jean. For example, the looped threads on the inside of the hems use a finer thread than the outside, so they have less stress on the needle, and the pocket designs use a cotton thread so that the design will get destroyed over time while the structural threads will stay intact.”
Six, oftentimes Iron Heart uses natural yarns on the weft so they look beige, not stark white.
Number seven, wide back pockets.
Eight, they use long-staple cotton fibers, originally Zimbabwe cotton, but then that turned out to be very unethical, so now they use long-staple American cotton, and long staple fibers, as I say all the time, are great because there’s more friction when the yarn is wrapped so it’s stronger and more durable.
Number nine, they make their denim more fade-resistant somehow – they won’t tell you how, but somehow.
Number ten (in writing this, I decided to add a bonus number 11), but this is what I think is the DNA of all Iron Heart denim: why the denim molds to your body, why it feels soft even though it’s so heavy – any magical thing that you attribute to Iron Heart denim is because of the double twisted weft yarns. The weft is the inside, the white part, the beige part of the jeans, and instead of using one thick yarn, which is used to make heavyweight denim, you can twist two thinner yarns and make something equally as thick, as robust, but it’s still soft, it molds to your body, it’s more durable in some cases, and that I think is the secret sauce.
And finally, number 11, overdying – nobody overdyes quite like Iron Heart. It is their art. It’s gorgeous.
Why Some People Don’t Buy the Hype
So, one, why are people so obsessed with it? What is the actual hype behind all of those features? And two, why do some people say there is no hype? That’s it – the real benefit of Iron Heart is they are distinctly not what you’re used to when you’re getting into the world of denim and denim in general.
They are heavy. They are beefy. They take a lot of time to break in. You know you are wearing a unit of jeans when you put them on. I was looking at my phone in my pocket, and even just seeing the way the denim went around the phone, you could tell these pants were beefy, and everybody knows.
But also, at the same time, heavyweight denim does a lot of the work for you in terms of styling yourself. These jeans have a life of their own – they build their own silhouette on your legs, they’re not swishing and moving about, they look the same on almost everybody, so they make you look masculine, which is the Iron Heart customer, although, if you were to look at me, you might think “are you sure?”
On another note, they also have the genius pitch with Mr. Haraki. The idea that there is this genius behind the scenes adding all of these things, moving all these things, changing everything to make the most durable, perfectly constructed jean in the world is very attractive.
And this is a quote from a guy we’ll talk about in one second, he says: “We are involved at the product from the very start to the very finish. The cotton is specified by Haraki to perform a certain function, the yarns are spun to his specs, the warp is dyed to his specs, the jeans are constructed to his specs – there is hardly an aspect that Haraki does not take a personal interest in making sure it is as good as he can make it.” Knowing all that is happening is very attractive to anybody.
Iron Heart does have a trick up its sleeves still, but why do some people not see the hype? Why is it so different between people who love it and don’t like it? The issue is that Iron Heart exists. Iron Heart essentially paved the way, made the blueprints for heavyweight denim, and made threads that you can use for really obscenely well-constructed jeans. So now, a lot of that stuff is standard practice.
Like I just talked about Strike Gold jeans, which are 25 ounces, 4 ounces heavier than the Iron Heart 634S, but they felt rougher; they felt way beefier and thicker and denser. Iron Heart does have jeans that are heavier than this, so they may feel comparative – I haven’t compared them, but there’s immediately another brand to compare to and think, “Well, I like this heavyweight from Strike Gold versus Iron Hearts.”
So I’m not saying Mr. Haraki and Iron Heart were the end all be all, teach everybody everything, nobody else knew how to do anything – that’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that if there is a circle that is raw Japanese denim, Iron Heart poked it out a little bit and learned something new or started to learn something new, and Iron Heart is the gold standard, but now other brands can do it as well.
The International Iron Heart Story: Giles Padmore’s Vision
I’m trying something new. I’m saying goodbye now before the article is over because all of you click away before I can say thank you for reading. Thank you so much for reading; it means a lot to me. Anyways, the one trick up Iron Heart’s sleeve is a man – that man’s name is Giles Padmore.
There’s also one more thing besides Giles that makes Iron Heart what it is, but Giles is a genius. Everything he did to bring Iron Heart international outside of Japan is brilliant, and I think it will one day be studied by marketing experts or whoever it may be on how to build a rock-solid brand.
Giles essentially took the Iron Heart philosophy on how to make a product and put it into a store and made not good customer service, not unreal customer service, but unbelievable customer service. This is a great time for me to say this is not sponsored by Iron Heart – I bought these jeans from Self Edge. Self Edge is great, Naked and Famous is great, Pure Blue Japan is great, Oni is great, but the Iron Heart UK shop – if you talk about Iron Heart on Reddit, the shop comes up: how unbelievable the customer service was, how much help they had.
Iron Heart International runs its own forum that is still incredibly popular, even when Reddit killed all the other super talk or denim forums. There is an Iron Heart cult and army because of how Giles distributed Iron Heart to the world.
Beyond Denim: The Full Iron Heart Universe
What you may be thinking – “Michael, what is that one trick up their sleeve that they have? You have not spoken about it yet.” It’s that they successfully took the formula that made them so great in the world of denim – super high quality, robust, top-of-the-top line – and they spread it out to their product line, and it was successful enough to make Iron Heart not just a denim brand, which a lot of the raw denim brands get stuck into. It’s like, “Well, they also make flannels, but you know their denim is what you’re after.”
Iron Heart has their flannels, their N1 deck jacket, their shoes, the leather version of their jackets – everything that Iron Heart makes has a cult following to it because it’s built to that crazy standard, and people are going after that crazy standard, and Iron Heart is like a gold seal of approval for that.
And I will say, ordering these and waiting for them to arrive at my door and stuff – I’ve never had Iron Hearts before – I did definitely get the feeling of like, “Ooh, I’m going to put on my Iron Hearts!”
Watch This Review
Bye Bye, and Thank You!
See above. Cheers!
This article was adapted from Michael Kristy’s video on The Iron Snail, with edits from FashionBeans, and was reviewed by Michael to ensure the integrity of his original content. Watch the full video here.
The Iron Snail is a men’s fashion vlog (and now article series!) starring a young man named Michael and featuring a snail no bigger than a quarter. The two are set on taking over the world of fashion by creating a clothing line to end all clothing lines. Until then, we’re here to tell you EVERYTHING you need to know about the best clothing out there, from the highest quality raw denim jeans to the warmest jackets to the sturdiest boots…the Iron Snail has got you covered.