A Selvedge Denim Pioneer Weighs in on His 5 Most-Worn Jeans

Kiya Babzani was one of the first guys at the Japanese denim party on this side of the Pacific. When Babzani and his wife, Demitra, opened Self Edge, their specialist denim shop in San Francisco in 2006, it was one of the only places in the country selling jeans from brands like Sugar Cane, Iron Heart, The Flat Head, and Mister Freedom.

Back in those days, before r/rawdenim and the proliferation of e-commerce, the only way to learn about Japanese jeans was on forums like Superfuture, and the only way for most people to buy them was in person, a reality that helped Babzani quickly become the go-to guy for denim nerds across the land.

Selvedge denim brands have proliferated over the last two decades, as have places to buy high-end jeans both IRL and online, but Self Edge remains a key player in the Japanese denim scene. Today, the retailer continues to offer a selection of coveted brands like Samurai and Studio D’Artisan across locations in NYC, LA, Portland, Austin, and San Jose del Cabo, Mexico, alongside the original SF flagship.

Needless to say, Babzani’s personal collection of dungarees would be the envy of any denimhead. We asked him to show us what he’s wearing these days.

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“This is the jean I’m wearing the most right now. Iron Heart is a Japanese brand we’ve been carrying since day one, and this is a collaboration we did with them about eight months ago. It was two pairs of jeans, two jackets, two shirts, and a t-shirt, a whole capsule collection including a 19-ounce denim that we developed. The intention was to take all the denim that Iron Heart produced over the last 25 years and sort of put it all together: aspects of the slub factor, the shade of indigo, the look of the weft from the inside of the jean, the selvedge ID, all that stuff. Nineteen ounces is kind of heavy by most people’s standards, but Iron Heart goes all the way up to 25 and down to 14, so it’s a mid-weight for them. I’ve been wearing the belt for 20 years—it’s brown snakeskin from Hollywood Trading Company, which is a really cool brand from LA.”

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“This is a much lighter-weight jean, 15 ounces, from a brand called Boncoura, and I believe they’re making the best five-pocket vintage-style jeans coming out of Japan. It’s a bit of a luxury product—it’s probably one of the most expensive raw denim brands in Japan, but the stitch quality and the attention to detail on the sewing is the best I’ve seen. The only thing that would rival this is a Roy jean. Roy’s stitch quality is psychotically perfect. Boncoura makes six different fits, but they’re not really into the super-heavy, slubby denim. They’re into denim that looks like a deadstock pair of jeans from the ’40s or ’50s. This is 15 ounces, pure Indigo dyed, with a natural undyed weft, which gives the weft side a little bit of a darker look than you’d find on an Iron Heart jean, which is usually bleached.

“Boncoura also uses 100% cotton constructional thread, which means these jeans will fall apart pretty quickly. All of the clothing you’re wearing right now uses polyester constructional thread or cotton polycore thread, but some hardcore Japanese brands, maybe less than 10 of them, refuse to use that and use 100% cotton thread. What that means is, when you’re wearing the jeans, the front pocket stitching will break within, like, six months, and the coin pocket will start to come apart within eight months, and the jean starts to fall apart like it would have 100 years ago. It takes some people by surprise, because you just paid 400 bucks for a pair of jeans that are falling apart. But the brand doesn’t care. It looks unnatural to them to have super-faded denim with all of the stitching still intact. So if you don’t like it, buy a different brand.”

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“This is from a Japanese brand called Devoa. It’s a 16-and-a-half-ounce, sulfur-dyed, slub denim made in Okoyama in a kind of faded-out black. You probably can’t see what’s going on here, but it’s got an articulated leg with a single back panel and a little bit of pleating on the front. And then it’s got a curved hemline, because it’s a super wide leg, so you never step on the hem on the back. It sounds weird, and it looks weird when you’re not wearing it, but when you put it on, it makes more sense. If you pay close attention when someone is wearing it, you can tell there’s something going on down at the hemline. Otherwise, it’s a great idea for a really wide leg. It’s got a bit of a balloon-leg fit, and it does not have the five traditional pockets, but it’s got a phone pocket that kind of slips into the back. I didn’t think I’d wear these as much as I do because they’re a little strange, but I wear them a lot.”

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“This is the same brand and almost the same jeans in green denim, but it’s their cargos. If you told me five years ago I’d be wearing cargo denim, I wouldn’t have believed you, because that’s not what I was into. But it’s almost like an M1951 military fatigue pant done by an avant-garde fashion brand, which is what Devoa is. This one is 13-and-a-half ounces, so it’s definitely lighter, much softer, easier to wear, but it’s still heavy because of all the pockets and the straps and the zippers. The designer of this brand used to be a competitive pro wrestler in Japan, and he’s really about the anatomy of the body, so the lining of everything he makes is patterned like tendons and layers of muscles. They’re really cool, but different.”

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“We started working with Rick Owens maybe six years ago, when they reached out to us to do a Japanese denim line. We went up to Paris to talk to them, and it didn’t work out the first season, but the second or third season it did, and we’ve been collaborating on this Japanese denim line since. We do Rick’s version of Iron Heart, basically, which is super brandless, simple, mostly heavyweight stuff like flannels, loopwheel T-shirts, jeans, and denim jackets. This is the most popular thing that has come out of that collection. It’s called the Geth, and it’s a 16-ounce super crispy, really rigid black denim. I got these the first time they came out, and I’ve worn them pretty heavily now. They’re a high-rise, super-wide leg and flared slightly—so not a fit you see often. We thought nobody was going to buy them the first season, but then I found out that my staff was buying them instantly, and I thought that was a good sign. Then I tried them on, and I loved them. Now we’re on our fourth or fifth season of making them exclusively for Self Edge.”