Obligatory Album Up Front

Background: A few years ago, I fell down the rabbit hole that is the Indonesian denim scene. I can’t count the number of shops that I follow on Instagram and I’ve got an account on Darah Kubiru that I rarely use in translated mode. I just check out the jeans. One of the these shops that caught my eye based on what seemed some solid quality and design choices was The Worker Shield. Initially I wanted some duck pants they were putting out, but one day they dropped a beautiful double indigo pair that was The Twindigo. I knew immediately that I’d have to get a pair. I even posted about them here because while I couldn’t grab them at the time, I was hoping that maybe someone else would and I could fade vicariously through them. Eventually The Worker Shield put out another run that I missed out on, but had the fabric available for MTO.

Acquisition & Ordering: I had spoken with Arya at The Worker Shield about doing an MTO, but I kept putting off actually doing it. So when I saw a pair of Twindigo’s in size 34 offered on their Instagram for a sale to clear out their run, I jumped at it. Shipping included, the total price came out to $180. I sent payment via Paypal on June 13th and began the eager wait for the jeans. What I didn’t realize is that that was the day before Eid al-Fitr, a religious holiday at the end of Ramadan. The Worker Shield guys were taking a few days off, and that was cool. So my stuff didn’t get shipped until the 19th or 20th. They sent me the EMS tracking info afterwards.

Here’s where things get weird. Indonesian EMS shipping got backlogged and my package was set aside or lost for a while. It was listed as the equivalent of “Shipping Label Generated” for another week. I got the Worker Shield guys to try contacting EMS and they didnt have any luck, and the US branch was pretty useless in my inquiries with them. They just kept telling me to check with Indonesian EMS. I tried for a few days to get an update, hearing nothing. So I trusted that everything would work out alright and stopped looking for a few days. In that time, EMS found my stuff and loaded it up. Still took until July 14th to get them in, but at least they made it.

This is the difficult thing about ordering from Indonesia. You can have amazing service like the 36 hours it took to get my NoBranded On’s or a month with these. This was of no fault with The Worker Shield, of course, but rather EMS.

Initial Impressions: I was not expecting to love the fabric as much as I do. It is quite rough on the outside yet pretty comfortable on the inside. There is a moderate amount of slub to the fabric and you can tell there is going to be some good looking vertical fading with this pair. One of the things that I like most is the speckling of white that comes along with the fabric. I’m not sure what causes this though, it might be from the yarn being twisted while looming or it might be from how the yarn was made. I’m entirely not sure, but it makes for a wonderful effect. Sort of like how Studio D’Artisan’s D1714 or X’s-33’s look like you just walked in from the snow. I made an initial thoughts album going over some of the details. In trying them on for the first time, presoak, I was a little concerned about the waist. Everything else could shrink some and be fine, but the waist was just a smidge above being perfect. So I did something foolish and made my 1x8 board stretch inhibitor. Soaked them for an hour in hot water, with a hint of detergent. There wasn’t much indigo loss, but I did realize that I should have coated the piece of wood with plastic wrap. But I didn’t so I just rinsed the jeans extra well afterwards and let them hang dry for two days.

Sizing: When I first started looking at these, I was convinced that a 35 in The Worker Shield’s Slim Straight would be perfect. This was going to be the majority of my MTO with them, as they go from a size 34 to 36. But the 34 came up on sale and I went for it. I was also down about 15 lbs from the beginning of the year and figured I could make it work.

Post soak everything looked great. I could have made a larger size work, but overall I’m happy with how things turned out. In the future I’ll not use the dumb board.

I’m still unsure what to do about the cuff though. What I would like to do is have a single thin cuff thats only about ¾ of an inch. But I think there might still be some lengthwise shrinkage left in the jeans so I’m going to hold off until after I give them a proper wash to have it done. But I do kinda like the thicker cuffs at the moment, though I’d prefer to not triple cuff as the are kinda fat. We’ll see.

A few wears in / Final thoughts: I think I’ve worn these about twice a week since receiving them. This isn’t very long at all, but they have been pretty comfortable and not at all too hot for the muggy and hot Midwest. The weave isn’t loose by any means, but it isn’t super tight either. The jeans still have some stiffness from the starch left in them but its fading away and they roughness of the fabric has pretty much gone on the inside. On the outside, the texture is amazing to me. I’ll rub my thighs while sitting around at work and it only takes a few times to make my hands feel kinda numb. Again, it is course, rough, and irregular and just darn interesting. My current phone doesn’t have the macro mode really necessary to capture what the fabric looks like. But trust me, its something special.

Overall, I decided I needed a pair of Indigo x Indigo to replace my 3sixteen SL120x’s. They’ve just seen a lot and are failing at the crotch and knees and aren’t work appropriate anymore. This pair has definitely filled in the deep dark denim needs that I had and I can only imagine what they’ll fade too. I love how my 3sixteens turned out and can’t wait to see what happens with this pair.

Score: 8/10. Beautiful fabric and good fit. A sewing imperfection and odd placement of buttons on the fly are a tad annoying, but ultimately not a big deal. Ordering from Indonesia was easy and painless, getting the shipper to do their job was very annoying.