Strike Gold’s new 5103 jean has landed at all stores. This model is their newest classic straight leg fit jean with a medium rise and a full cut leg.

With this new 5103 model Strike Gold have produced a 15oz unsanforized (but rinsed) denim made of pure indigo warp threads and a light gray weft thread. The denim is very interesting because they used a super short slub cotton for the weft threads. This is a cotton staple so short we believe it's shorter than the sugar cane fibers used in Sugar Cane's famed Okinawa and Hawaii jeans, except those use a slub fiber (sugar cane) in the warp and weft of the denim. Using a cotton staple this short is tricky when producing a fabric that should be rugged and somewhat heavy in weight because the yarns need to be spun at a far slower pace and therefore increasing the risk of the shuttle yarn (aka, the weft thread) snapping far more often than it already does. The slow spinning of the thread should not be confused with the tension or speed of a loom, spinning of yarns is a process which happens far before any loom is involved in making a fabric. All this work results in a denim that looks like no denim we've seen before. The process used gives the denim an extremely uneven texture, but not necessarily slubby looking. Our best description is that at a 45 degree angle it can be compared closely to a vintage hand-woven Persian rug, but not so much that most people wouldn't be able to tell much of a difference outside of the deeper color. The jean looks like an indigo colored denim but has a deeper blue hue from the weft threads peaking through the indigo warp threads. It's a jean like this which reminds us that we haven't seen it all, yet.

They've upped the weight to 15oz and due to the abrasive nature of the denim when new the jean will age faster than most jeans and yield a high contrast fade with normal wear.

Strike Gold has gone to the extent of getting custom rivets made which have a male part made of iron and a female piece made of copper. The reason for this is that the male piece will begin to rust over time but the female piece will darken and leaf over time giving the wearer a well rounded aging pattern even on the rivets. Crazy for some, essential for others.

We've also received a full restock of loopwheeled blank t-shirts, available in three colors.