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The Iron Heart 634S Returns, My WL#2 Slim Fit’s Back on Pre-Order, and the Story of Rivets
A couple of jeans people have been waiting for are finally back this week.
Iron Heart has restocked the legendary 634S after months out of stock, and I’ve reopened pre-orders for the Weirloom WL#2 Slim Fit after the first run disappeared pretty quickly.
Plus, I’ve got a good Memorial Weekend deal from Gustin, and a little denim history lesson about the small piece of metal that essentially created blue jeans as we know them.
In This Issue of the DH Weekly
- Iron Heart’s 634S — the heavyweight jean that helped define an entire category is finally back in stock
- Weirloom WL#2 Slim Fit — pre-orders reopen for the slimmer version of my own selvedge jeans
- Gustin Memorial Weekend sale — 40% off Featured Stock jeans that are already made and ready to ship
- From the Archive — why jeans have rivets, 153 years after Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis got the patent
Iron Heart’s Most Iconic Jean Is Back
It took me years to work myself up to heavyweight denim. By the time I finally got my first pair of Iron Hearts—the 634S, their now-iconic straight fit in the brand’s famous 21 oz. denim—I’d already worn a lot of raw denim jeans. But this still felt like a rite of passage.
Before heavyweight selvedge became its own category, Iron Heart helped define it. The 634S proved that heavy denim didn’t have to feel like armour.
The formula is actually pretty simple:
- A regular straight fit inspired by the 1966 Levi’s 501
- Selvedge denim woven from double-twisted weft yarns in a looser weave that makes it surprisingly wearable.
- Built to survive basically anything.
More than two decades after it was introduced, it still feels like the benchmark heavyweight jean for a lot of people—and probably the pair most responsible for making heavy denim wearable beyond the hardcore niche.
This denim’s stubborn at first, no question. But the combination of the looser weave and the double-twisted weft yarns makes it far more wearable than the weight suggests. Once broken in, it becomes surprisingly comfortable.
Iron Heart has just restocked the 634S after it being sold out for months, and sizes will probably disappear quickly again.
You can find them here:
- Iron Heart International (the UK)
- Brooklyn Clothing Co. (Canada)
- Franklin & Poe (USA)
- Iron Shop Provisions (USA)
- Rugged Gentlemen Shoppe (Singapore)
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Weirloom Slim Fits Are Back on Pre-Order
Back in November, I launched the WL#2 Slim Fit jeans. Between the pre-orders and the small amount of extra stock I booked, most sizes disappeared pretty quickly.
Since then, I’ve had quite a few people asking when it would return. So I’ve booked another batch, and pre-orders are now open again.
Unlike the first run, this production is already confirmed. That means the stock numbers you see online are the actual quantities I have available with this batch, scheduled for delivery in mid-August.
The WL#2 is built on the same foundation as the original Regular Fit jeans:
- Italian selvedge denim woven on traditional shuttle looms
- cut and sewn in Portugal
- mid-rise top block
- easy sizing without guesswork
… just with a slimmer and slightly tapered leg.
I’ve also made a couple of changes for North American customers:
Starting with this production, Weirloom orders to the US will ship DDP (Delivered Duty Paid), which means I cover the import tariffs upfront. I’m also now offering free standard shipping on jeans to both the US and Canada.
Pre-orders are available now with 25% off the stock.
The Thinking Behind Weirloom
This might be a good place to explain what Weirloom actually is—and why I started making my own jeans after spending more than 15 years writing about other brands.
Denimhunters has always been about helping people understand jeans better: what matters, what doesn’t, how things fit, and why some pairs are genuinely worth the money.
And after years of handling jeans at every price point, one thing became increasingly clear to me:
Most people don’t want denim to become a hobby. They just want a really good pair of jeans.
The problem is that buying good jeans often becomes more complicated than it needs to be: confusing marketing, less than transparent pricing, difficult sizing, trend-driven fits, and products that either feel overbuilt for normal life—or underwhelming for the money.
Weirloom is my attempt to simplify that. The idea is not to reinvent jeans. It’s to make the kind of pair I think most people are actually looking for:
- quality denim
- a good fit
- honest production
- thoughtful details
- and pricing that makes sense
The jeans are made in small runs, produced in Europe, and built around long-term wear.
If you know all the denim terminology already, great. If you don’t, that’s completely fine too. The whole point is that you shouldn’t need a degree in denim to buy a pair of jeans you genuinely enjoy wearing.
And honestly, after writing about this stuff for most of my adult life, making my own jeans has been both terrifying and incredibly satisfying at the same time 😅
Gustin’s Memorial Weekend Sale Is Worth a Look
Gustin is running 40% off its Featured Stock section throughout Memorial Weekend.
That means these are not crowdfunding campaigns where you wait months for production. These are pairs already made and ready to ship.
Still, Gustin’s crowdfunding model is part of what makes the brand so interesting. Since 2013, they’ve built much of the business around producing based on actual demand instead of loading up inventory and hoping it sells later.
That idea was also part of the inspiration behind how I launched Weirloom last year and why I’m continuing to do pre-orders.
With another 40% off on top of Gustin’s normal Featured Stock pricing, some of these jeans become exceptionally good value for American-made selvedge.
From the Archive: Why Jeans Have Rivets
153 years ago this week, Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis received the patent for riveted workwear. A tiny piece of metal that ended up defining an entire garment.
The idea was simple: reinforce the points that kept tearing under heavy wear—mainly the pocket corners and the base of the fly.
Today, most people obviously don’t need rivets for durability anymore. But jeans without rivets still somehow don’t really feel like jeans.
I revisited the history of rivets this week in the Denimhunters archive, including how Jacob Davis came up with the idea, why Levi’s ended up owning the patent, and how this tiny detail became one of the defining features of blue jeans.
The post The Jeans That Made Heavyweight Denim Wearable appeared first on Denimhunters.
DENIM and PATCHES sourced this post originally published on this site