First Impressions: This Denim is Straight-Up Sandpaper

Sup Snailiens, it’s Michael. Okay, the denim on the jeans we’re talking about today is so stiff and aggressive. It feels like a very light sandpaper is grinding against my legs.

These are the Samurai S500 AX coming in at $442. These are 96% cheaper than Samurai’s legendary $10,000 Samurai Cotton Project jeans. These jeans have an itty, teensy bit of the same cotton found in those $10,000 jeans in them.

The really awkward thing about this article is the cotton in the denim that is used to make the jeans that we’re talking about is a cotton that I’ve called low quality in like 50 different articles.

The Wild Thing About Samurai’s Production Process

They had to reintroduce farming techniques that hadn’t been used in the area for over 157 years. Also, cotton is not even a native plant to Japan, although cotton is often grown on Japanese farms after tsunami damage because cotton can be grown in much saltier soil than rice.

Samurai is so particular about their jeans that they recommend you only use a soap made from a byproduct of soy sauce production – but not modern soy sauce production. The soy sauce production has to be done the old traditional way so they can properly extract the virgin oil of a soybean after it’s pressed.

About That Momotaro Controversy…

Now, that is some Japanese raw denim hype if I have ever heard it myself, and it reminds me of Momotaro’s gold-labeled jeans where the denim on those jeans is woven by hand, and Momotaro says it takes 8 hours to weave 1 meter of this fabric.

But if you go to one of their videos about it and you look at the top two comments, the first commenter is a hand weaver and says, “1 meter in 8 hours? With that machine you should be able to do like 9 meters in 8 hours.” And the second commenter says, “I don’t know why you are saying this is the only machine left in the world that can do this – there are literally hundreds of thousands of those exact machines across the world still being used today.”

I believe Momotaro just because: one, you can’t gather exactly what a company is doing just by one video shot in like 2009, and two, English isn’t even their main language, so when they say “this is the only machine in the world” they may not mean this actual machine is the only one of its kind – they may mean this is the only type of machine in the world that can do this.

Today’s Game Plan

Today, we’ll be going over: one, what makes this denim special; two, how Samurai broke the term Japanese denim – this is the only real Japanese denim in the world by Samurai’s terms, and then we’ll be talking about the features of these jeans, and finally we answer the hard question: is this just marketing hype with a huge inflated price?

Meet Mr. Nogami: The Mad Scientist of Denim

There are two words that, when related to clothing, 99% of people think, “I do not want my clothes to be described like that.” Those two words are ‘heavy’ and ‘harsh.’

Samurai heard those words and thought, “Oh sick, yeah, yeah, that’s exactly what we want!”

In order to truly understand what makes Samurai denim so special, we have to take those two terms – heaviness and harshness – and break them apart, and I will try my best to explain both. Mr. Nogami is the founder of Samurai. He founded Samurai in 1997, and denim in Japan in 1997 was starting to get pretty crazy.

There was the Osaka 5, which I talked about in my Iron Heart article. Still, essentially, there were all these amazing brands starting to craft all this incredibly unique denim, but it all kind of centered around Levi’s and what Levi’s was doing.

The jeans had to be the same weight and density as Levi’s, the tags had to be the same, and the designs on the back pockets had to be the same. But that’s not even what we’re talking about today.

What we’re talking about today is Mr. Nogami and Samurai. He said, “I do like what Levi’s is doing, but I want to change things up a little bit. I want to make the heaviest jeans in the world – something that has never been done before.” And that’s where it gets a little tricky. I think it was done before.

The Truth About Short Staple Cotton (It’s Wild)

Mr. Nogami makes denim that’s usually 50 to 200% heavier than Levi’s jeans. Now, the coolest part of Samurai is the harshness of this denim. It’s very harsh – it feels like sandpaper. There are little thorns in it at the beginning when you first get the jeans.

Why is that? Why does it feel like that, and why is it less durable, and is it bad or low quality? I have called short-staple cotton fiber low-quality for a very long time now. I’m going to talk about the other end of that. I’ve never just said it’s low quality.

Picture long-staple cotton as a classy young man sitting at a table drinking tea, and then you look across the table at short-staple cotton, and it’s drunk, laying on the table and peeing straight upwards, and it’s showering onto itself.

If you say to long-staple cotton fibers, “I’m going to spin you into a yarn today,” they will say, “Oh, I can’t wait to be spun into a yarn!” If you say the same thing to short-staple cotton fibers, they will stage a full-on rebellion. As you’re spinning them, they’ll be clawing to try and get out. They’ll be wild, they’ll be gnarly.

So their yarns look like you just took a snapshot of them rebelling against you and trying to break out from their yarn, and the byproduct of that is it doesn’t look very smooth or uniform – it looks a little naughty, nasty, weird.

In short, long-staple cotton fiber is more durable, smoother against the skin, shinier, and softer. Short staple cotton fiber has a lot of texture, and on top of that, you can process the cotton more or less.

Samurai doesn’t process their cotton a lot, so those thorns that I keep talking about are sticks and leaves and stuff like that from the actual cotton plant that remained in all the cotton when it was spun into yarn and then, as a result, is now in your jeans. And that does come out of your jeans.

The Night That Changed Japanese Denim Forever

Nobody comes close to what Mr. Nogami did one night over sake when he said to some other people, “Hey, wait a minute, it’s not really Japanese denim jeans because we get all the cotton from, like, Texas – what’s with that? Let’s fix it.” And he did. Mr. Nogami’s goal obviously was to just grow cotton in Japan and make jeans, shirts, whatever it may be out of it, but there are like a trillion problems.

Number one, there are no native cotton species in Japan because Japan is not good for growing cotton, so that’s really hard to do. And on top of all of that, Mr. Nogami wanted to do this completely natural – no pesticides, they don’t even water their cotton.

When it rains, it rains, they’re like, “Alright, that’s good.” And I know what you’re probably thinking – why stop there? That’s also exactly what Mr. Nogami thought because there is no machining on anything. All the cotton is picked by hand, the seeds are picked out by hand, and everything is cleaned by hand – no machines, no nothing, pure natural.

If there was cotton in my backyard, I would pick it out of the ground, throw the seeds out, and give it to Mr. Nogami. He would say, “Thank you, Michael,” and throw it in the trash ’cause we’re in America. Because of all of this, Samurai reintroduced farming techniques that hadn’t been seen in the area for like 160 years. They have community events. They have barbecues. Local elementary school children come to the farms to see how to plant, to see cotton, to learn about nature, and everything like that.

It’s safe to say that Mr. Nogami and, by extension, Samurai are doing everything in the slowest, most natural possible way, and they say it takes them about one day to process a kilo of cotton. So it takes them all year to process something that they only make 100 jeans out of, which is not a lot. They’re losing money on every single pair.

And after all of that, the top comment on Reddit about these jeans is: “What a brilliant ripoff – you get your very own customers to grow your cotton and process it, then you sell it back to them for $10,000.” Essentially, it took Samurai years to figure out how to grow cotton properly.

To have enough cotton to actually make one pair of jeans, they had to find someone who would spin that small amount of cotton. They had to find someone who would dye it by hand with natural indigo, all this stuff. So, $10,000 became the symbolic price.

So I don’t even really think the first pair of jeans made with this denim was ever for sale – I think that specific point was the marketing: the price of the jeans.

Let’s Break Down All 13 Features (This Gets Good)

Ready or not, here is a breakdown of all of these jeans’ features. There are 13:

Number one: We now know that they use 18 oz denim, but it is also dyed with a combination of natural and synthetic indigo, which is reportedly what gives it a striking blue hue.

Number two: This denim is unsanforized, so it’ll change shape a bit after a rinse.

Number three: We get a sweet custom leather patch.

Number four: All of the thread that you see all over the jeans is made from cotton.

Number five: They use silver-painted iron buttons. I think they’re iron, and I think the reason that they paint them with silver is so they stay silver for longer, but eventually, as that paint chips away, the buttons rust.

Number six: 100% pure copper rivets that will oxidize and look crazy over time.

Number seven: The pocket bags are printed specifically for this line of jeans – they’re not generic pocket bags that go in all Samurai jeans.

Number eight: We have front rivets that have cool backing designs.

Number nine: The back pockets are also riveted with different backing designs.

Number ten: The belt loops are raised.

Number eleven: The back pockets are lined with the same material as the pocket bags.

Number twelve: Not crazy, but we’re using two different colored threads throughout the jeans, which is logistically another layer.

Number thirteen: It may be a little tough to see at first, but we have hidden back pocket designs that will show themselves as your back pockets fade and get lighter. The thread will stay the same color.

Wow, that was pretty cool, thanks Michael!

The Big Question: Are These Actually Worth It?

Are they worth it? You could get short-staple cotton fiber from anywhere else in the world for way, way cheaper, way logistically easier, and that’s what a lot of other Japanese denim brands do – so not there. You can get tougher denim from Iron Heart, which is also cheaper, so not there. And you could get 34 pairs of George jeans from Wal-mart for the price of one of these, which makes it seem like, no, it’s not worth it, right?

But what about the durability factor? This part may be a little surprising because short-staple cotton fiber is not as durable as long-staple cotton fiber – we know that – but the real question is: how perceptively different is it? Will these break down before Iron Hearts?

Probably yes, for the most part, but there are also a trillion other factors that come into play. So generally, I would say that Iron Hearts last longer, but then if you look online, people say their Samurai has outlasted their Iron Hearts because there are a million different factors that go into every single pair of jeans – what cotton is being used, what yarn, where did it break, why did it break?

What You’re Really Paying For

Overall, with Samurai, what you’re paying for is the art and care. Using two different rivets is crazy, as is painting the buttons and custom pocket bags, making insane texture denim, and starting their own farm – that’s the big ticket with Samurai jeans. The only thing that would actually break down notably faster is the stitching, which is the cotton threads.

So, the question is: Is it all hype? Is it all marketing? Is it just something that’s dumb? Are they just ripping people off? No. Would you rather samurai start their own cotton fields in Japan, where it’s very hard to grow, and they have to figure all this stuff out? Or would you rather Levi’s hire Brad Pitt and Jaden Smith and everybody to advertise their jeans and stuff like that?

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Final Thoughts: Marketing vs. Pure Passion

Somewhere in Japan, there’s a man who is tending to a cotton farm, where he’s losing money because he just wants to have something that is the best of the best. He wants to do it all naturally. I think it’s a total appreciation of the craft. There are people who look at a mundane object like a pair of jeans and say, “How perfect can we possibly make these? How far can we go to see what we can change and to make this an art form?”

And I will leave you with a quote from Mr. Nogami. Mr. Nogami says, “It’s for the love of it. It’s not about money. In this one thing, I want us to be unbeatable, to do something that nobody else is doing or has ever done.” And he succeeded.

Anyway, though, I will see you all soon. Thanks so much!

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.