This year has been my year of heavyweight T-Shirts. I’ve enjoyed cheap import blanks enough that I’ve gotten curious about what else is out there in T-Shirt land. So, when I purchased my first pair of selvedge jeans at the Mission District’s Self Edge, I had a look at shirts as well. A thick, 16oz Samurai Jeans shirt caught my eye.

My SJST-SC01 is the natural undyed color. I feel this complements the organic material. This is the heaviest heavyweight shirt I own. The texture is pronounced. It feels a bit like wearing a weighted blanket. It is mostly wonderfully soft. However, especially early into ownership, the material pokes. I’ve found that combination of extreme comfort and random pokes novel. It’s been impossible to forget I’m wearing this shirt, and that’s made me feel cool, even when I’m not dressed for the crowd.

I wore this shirt to a Arnocorps show at the bottom of the hill. This is a 25 year old Oakland-native Arnold Swartzenagger themed band. The crowd was dressed mostly in black leather and denim vest with biker patches. While I didn’t fit in, I still felt cool.

On the subject of denim, the marketing is a little funky and jeans coded. It’s marketed as a 16oz / sq yd shirt, but as weighed it’s more like 10.3oz / sq yd. They’re likely referring to the yarn or production material, not the end product.

The material is the headline feature, but this shirt’s construction is also great. The stitching is strong and comfortable. I’ve had a minimal amount of warping. I’m eyeballing about 6mm, but I haven’t gotten the right tool to measure precisely yet. I am hang drying this shirt, and that’s likely helping suppress warp. I recommend you do this to any piece of clothing you really care about, it’ll last way longer. I’m four washes in as I write this review, and I can now count the number of pokes from a full day of wear on one hand. Feeling the material change over time has been really fun.

Shrinkage has been minimal, better than any other shirt I’ve measured (more reviews are incoming). After 4 washes the chest is down from 59 -> 57cm, the sleeve width is down from 18 -> 17cm and length hasn’t changed much. In fact, the length of the shirt overall was about 2.5cm longer than the 75cm the product page claims, which works well for my build and today’s style.

Surprisingly this shirt has gained weight from its first measurements. It started at 374g and it’s now 381g. This is either due to the relationship between my moist San Francisco Bay Area microclimate and moisture hungry cotton or a poor rinse cycle in my particular washing machine that leaves some detergent residue on the shirt. It’s happened to every other shirt in the review pipeline so at least it will be consistent.

Like most Japanese clothing, you may want to size up. I’m 102kg (225lb), 187cm (6’2”ish), with a wide frame and I’m at the limits of the XXL. I’ve still got good length when I lift my arms in this shirt, but a few more months of lifting might push me out of the shoulders. Thankfully, this shirt also comes in a 3XL. That is not a given with Japanese selvedge denim brands. Overall, I like how this shirt looks and fits, but I can’t achieve what I imagine is the intended oversized fit with it.

I think the question any time you spend more than the bare minimum on clothes is, is it worth it? To me, yes. Why? For the SJST-SC01, the whole supply chain is contained within a first world country, the cotton is grown without pesticides in Sasayama, the cloth is likely sewn by craftspeople under fair wages in Okayama, and the shirt is stylish. I feel like I’m paying to support an experiment in making something that is both responsibly made and cool at the same time. I feel like I’ve purchased an item that is good quality, too expensive to throw out and too classically cool to take out of rotation.

I like a good T-Shirt and I plan to review many more. I doubt the SJST-SC01 offers the best pure value, but I do think it’s worth buying. For those who are looking to spend conspicuously, I’d hope you also spend consciously. Samurai’s granola, organic craft and fair business practice stories appeal to me more personally than a luxury brand graphic.

The SJST-SC01 is not ostentatious. It’s sold on a crunchy story without being outdoors-person clothing. It behaves like heavyweight selvedge denim by growing more comfortable over time. It’s my favorite current heavyweight shirt. My next review will almost assuredly be of something I like less.

It isn’t perfect though. I’ve found that this shirt pills up faster than others in this review batch. There is a lot of material to wear through, but it’s a little disheartening to see signs of wear on something so nice. I’ll provide further updates on durability as it wears.