When or how you started wearing Ironheart
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! So sorry to hear that, man — was this a Jackson person? Whatever the case, that's always such a heartbreaking thing. As someone who's beyond grateful to have come out the other side of it, I'm always gutted to hear about people who aren't so lucky.On the IH origins topic, good on you for being able to tolerate Minneapolis! Haha I couldn't do that shit, no way… NY cold was as much as I could take.
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Man, @Matt do you remember Levis Hard Jeans? I remember they did a whole ad campaign around them in the late 90s — of course I was drawn to them and picked up a few pairs over the years. I remember they were cheap because nobody wanted them, but I think they were selvedge, and they definitely faded really well. I wish I still had em! I remember a particularly destroyed pair I wore through my first couple years of art school in NY. They were all blown out and had dots of ferric acid all over them from etching.
I think after that, it was picking up some APCs in the mid 00s for a blip of interest, then followed by a deep dive into selvedge around 2012.
First pair of IH was 555-01, and they absolutely blew my mind. They were more comfortable than anything else, but also way burlier, and despite the fact that people consider the 21oz to be mellow faders, I thought (and still think) that denim is my personal fave as far as fading goes.
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lmaooooo I love how this is bracketed by a Taco Bell spot and a MINIDISC ad
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It was @popvulture and I had no idea he had those demons–probably hadn't seen him since high school, and it wasn't a problem then, so they developed afterwards. Great human being as are so many of those who succumb to this disease.
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lol those look sick af @popvulture
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Other ppl: "You must save so much money now."
Me: [scrambles to pay necessaries while wearing $500 bibs]
cc: @popvulture
hahahahaha
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Dude, I did not know what you were taking about until I watched the ad. I totally remember that dudes voice and the “flesh eating locusts.” My early and late 90’s were spent first in high school then in college so I was way too drunk to be worried about even wearing pants much less what kind they were.
After lots of reading up online I jumped right in with the first non VMC round of 666XHS. I just sent them to RELOVE last week. My 21 oz Beatle Busters are now my oldest pair and I think I’ll keep them forever.
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Hahaha I know, the ads in the 90s were having a real Hunter S Thompson moment, weren't they?
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Great stories! Thx @goosehd for starting this thread and how cool that your first IH's where the 805's.
My first pair was a pair of 634S-21 which sill is my favorite cut. This pair was bought too large, I didn't konw anything about stretch and after some wear I realized I should have sized down but I still have it. It must have been around 2014 or 2015 when by chance I stumbled into Vienna shop Lowdownondenim which doesn't excist anymore but was an IH dealer at that time. Until that moment I never heard anything about japanese denim, selvedge denim, raw denim aso. But I always had a great love and interest in fabrics. Before I started wearing (IH) denim I almost daily wore bespoke suits and dress shirts. A complete transformation started. This stuff realy infected and thrilled me. I always had an interest in well made things. When I now look at a well made and well aged pair of IH denim I do it with the same love I look at one of my old Harris Tweed Jackets, just things that age with lots of character and made to last. -
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I started when this Mississippi boy lived in Minneapolis. I was looking for heavy stuff to keep me warm without having to do the Michelin Man thing all the time. IH happened to be dialed in to my aesthetic so it worked out great! First pair were 643S which I sold here after getting denim ADD from all the great fabrics and cuts IH has created. I will return to the flagship denim one day, but the 777N is next in my IH queue after my current 666S-18 retire.
Kudos on not getting sucked down the black hole of addiction folks. I have seen too many lives destroyed and lost. In fact, just lost another one last week. Even if the addiction doesn't ruin your life and the lives around you, the justice system can, even if you are just dabbling, since we treat illegal mind-altering substance abuse as a criminal more than a mental health issue.
there's a lot of people making a lot of money keeping drugs illegal.
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got a loom state type3 from selfedge. there was no going back
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I initially got into Diesel back in the late 90's and early 2000's and made my way to Superfuture. Then I bought my first pair of selvedge denim, Regular Ralf Nudie's back in the early 2004 or so. There used to be a great streetwear store named "Factory People" in Austin off of South Congress that sold Nudie, Evisu, Maharishi, ICR, etc and such which got me interested in other brands. I purchased my first pair of IH 634's off of Styleforum back in 2007 or so and I finally found the IH forum back in 2010, lurked for a little over a year before finally joining and getting officially involved in 2011. Been going down the rabbit hole since.
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It's been quite a long, strange trip for me. I've been into fashion for as long as I can remember, dating back all the way to somewhere around 6th or 7th grade in school. But until very recently I was never much into selvage denim or the workwear aesthetic at all.
In the late '90s and early '00s, I was living in Chicago post-college and was really into Diesel jeans and the Eurotrash look in general. Somewhere around 2004/2005 I discovered Superfuture and was made aware of Japanese denim for the first time, but while intrigued I didn't really take the bait. Instead, I jumped head-first into Dior Homme and built quite the collections of Hedi-era garments.
It was a few years later that I first considered actually buying an IH piece - a black melton wool CPO - that I thought would pair well with my wardrobe. But despite my best efforts, I was never able to track down an XS, so it never came to be.
Eventually, I tired of the ultra-skinny Dior look, and by around 2010 I had transitioned to a wardrobe consisting of almost exclusively Rick Owens pieces. By now I was living in NYC and wanted 1 nice pair of regular jeans because at the time Rick's DRKSHDW line wasn't really doing it for me. I knew going in that I'd like a pair of IH, but back then there were no truly slim cuts available, and not much in the way of black denim either. So I ended up with a pair of PBJ from BiG in SoHo.
I went through a few pairs of those PBJ before I eventually got sucked deeper into the avant-garde world and started to discover Carol Christian Poell, Boris Bidjan Saberi, and the like. Eventually, I settled back into a primarily Rick wardrobe with a few CCP pieces mixed in (mostly leather jackets and boots). This is pretty much where I stayed for the better part of a decade.
Fast forward to mid-2020, when the pandemic was in full swing. I was no longer getting dressed up in full "goth ninja" attire to go to my job in advertising every day or to hang out at bars & restaurants with friends. And putting those clothes on for my daily walks around the neighborhood just wasn't feeling right, but I didn't really have anything else. It was at that point I decided that I wanted some more functional, utilitarian clothes to walk the mostly-deserted streets and run my essential errands.
When I began my search, IH was the first place I looked. And I was quite pleased to discover the 555 in 21oz SBG denim. After a little research on sizing, I ordered a pair online and fell in love with them. It was painful at first, especially having been a decade removed from my last experience with raw denim, but I persevered and ended up wearing those jeans on a daily basis.
After that first pair, I ended up buying a black military serge western, and then the super black type III. My wardrobe in early 2021 was still 100% black, but I was finding that the IH pieces were mixing well with my Rick t-shirts and CCP boots.
As we got deeper into 2021 and things were starting to get back to normal, I transitioned back to wearing mostly Rick but I remained drawn to IH as well. At this point, I bought my first non-black garment in nearly 20 years - a red/black buffalo check UHF. Wearing that shirt as an overshirt with my usual outfits was a game-changer for me. Kind of the perfect blend of avant-garde and traditional. I then went on to pick up the navy/black ombre UHF, an 18oz OD CPO, the 13oz black flannel CPO, and a few other shirts. And, of course, I finally got that melton wool CPO that I had lusted for 15 years earlier.
Oh, and I even bought a pair of fucking bibs somewhere along the way!
I'll probably never be as hardcore IH as most here, and I'll probably always wear it a little differently than most by pairing it with some more avant-garde pieces, but I'm now at the point where I rarely if ever leave the house without at least one IH garment somewhere on my body.
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[mention]jskidder [/mention] I would love to see some photos. They would be a great alternative to the workwear posts often seen here.
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Those are some deeper cuts.