JEANS

so you wear wrangler to work, but not the selvage?

My work wranglers are the 16 dollar slim cowboy cut, the guy at work call them Stranglers. My wranglers with selvage are one of my "nice" pair of jeans.

Got it. I was trying to work out a couple posts ago whether "nice" jeans (which are often spoke of for their durability) are suitable for dirty work and outdoorsy adventure. you would say no, then?

I don't know anything about nice jeans. Best I do are maybe a $40 Levis, but I usually go for wranglers. But I've been intrigued by the legends of durability that surround raw denim.

I've had these for 3 years now and they were almost black when I first bought them. I've only washed them every 6 months and never dried them.
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8155/7282593196_ca41c45aec.jpg

has anyone tried this, the price is great!
Make your own jeans

I find myself struggling with anything that isn't a v slim or skinny fit, as my legs are sparrow-like. It's really annoying especially when trousers have way too much fabric at the ankle/foot. So been trying to get stuff tailored a bit lately, it's tricky enough tho.

holy eff i tried on like 30 pairs of jeans this afternoon in epic jeans trying-on session. there's a store near my place called jeans jeans jeans and they are rad there but you need stamina. funnily enough i ended up buying the first pair of jeans i tried on. sigh/lol. i tried on so many butt-flattening, love-handle making jeans, argh. anyway, the jeans i got are Nudie jeans, "tube kelly", and they are rad. unisex jeans for me all the way.

seriously i almost cried after about 30 min. never try on jeans when you have pms btw. i forgot.

these jeans are only getting more and more awesome
and i have worn them a lot

i told this guy last night that they were the kind you don't wash for 6 months and he was kind of horrified, haha

Wait, excuse me? You don't wash them for six months??

i wear those same jeans :D i get some "girl jeans" comments sometimes but whatevs.

you're not supposed to, no!
i would've been horrified upon being told this by the jeans people, but i've known about this no-washing-of-quality-denim thing for years, just have never bought a pair with this dictum
xp

that's funny because in the store i was like "i thought nudie only made guys jeans" and was told they're unisex. not that it matters; good fit is good fit.

Wow! I feel like most jeans lose shape after a couple wears. I guess these don't because of the quality?

I'm done with summer skirt/dress shopping for a while now and have been losing some weight. I think maybe next month when I'm at goal and have a little more $$ I might get some real quality jeans for the first time ever.

these jeans are not losing their shape, so far so good, and i've worn them several times with lots of walking and dancing and sitting down, yknow, the stretch-'em-out activities. i hate jeans that stretch out after one or two wears; they are so over for me.

You would be crazy to wash raw denim for at least 6 months, maybe a light hand washing. Quality jeans will grow into their shape the more you wear them without washing, especially if you buy the right fit. Although I have a friend who is serious about jeans and bought a very pricey pair of japanese jeans and climbed into the bathtub filled with hot water with them on. He said they are the best fitting jeans he owns now.

yeah if something horribly dirty befalls me while i'm wearing these jeans i will prob just jump in a lake with them on or something

my inner dirtbag is thrilled btw

no no no

you should always soak your raw denim for 30 minutes or so in cold water (no soap) and then hang-dry them. this will remove the starch, open up the denim a bit and get any shrinkage out of the way. if they're well-dyed jeans you should hardly notice any loss of color, though they will lose that crispy shiny look.

then you can go ahead and do what jacob is saying.

those jeans aren't stretching because they're not 100% cotton (they're a stretch blend w/ 2% elastic polyester)

xpost to rrrrrrrobyn

wait what

so after 6 months i should soak my jeans in cold water and hang them to dry
i wasn't going to jump in a lake or a bathtub with my jeans on btw but if that's what the experts decree...

i actually disagree w/ jacob, after like 10 years of collecting fancy fancy jeans (up to like $400) i've eventually realized that no matter how you wash and wear them (within reason) you will eventually get denim-nerd fades and creases. the key is to keep putting wear on the jeans. i know people who've worn non-fancy diesel jeans for five or six years and have machine-washed and dried them monthly, and they look more or less like the hot jeans on denim forums. similarly i know people who've ended up w/ that look after a year, machine washing and drying every month, but they rode their bike a couple miles every day in their jeans.

the one thing that jacob's approach actually does well is that it gets the fades and creases in before you go through that awkward medium-blue "mom jeans" color.

but mark my words, the craze for super-dark denim and is dying and i bet you just like terminally unhip shit like crazy pattern shirts and sweaters are suddenly trendy the mom jean denim color (not the fit) will be back soon.

robyn in your case it doesn't matter since your jeans are a stretch blend, so soak or no soak they're not going to change shape.

my greatest concern here is just that they don't lose their shape
xp
okay good!

so do i have to stick to the no-washing for 6-months thing or ?

that has to do w/ the color and fading, not the shape

the thinking is that moving in your jeans causes the cotton fibers to bend and flex which weakens the bond between dye and fabric. similarly parts of the jeans rub up against things which also weakens the bond.

indigo is quite water soluble, so the parts that have been weakened by wear will fade faster. denim heads do the "wash every six months" thing w/ the idea that parts that get a lot of wear (like around the knees and pockets) will develop cool creasing patterns as they fade.

the problem with that thinking is that if you're not actually moving around a ton in your jeans, the effect of the wear will be minimized. i've seen great results from jacob's method and i've seen pretty weak ones. it seems to have to do w/ a lot of variables ... i've seen people beat the fuck out of their jeans and not wash for a year and get terrible fades because whatever they did put wear much more evenly on the jeans. in my case, i had jeans that i wore dancing for a long time and rarely washed and they didn't turn out so good because i think sweating through the jeans kinda put wear on the entire fabric.

on the other hand my gf has some crappy j crew dark denim jeans that got great fades, but that has to do w/ the fact that she wears them ass-tight and spends a lot of time kneeling to help middle school students and running around after them.

so yeah, long story short is ... i don't know.

ah it's like jeans fashion science/religion or something
i'm just like to have found a pair of jeans that look cool, hold their shape and don't flatten my ass

i suppose you will not be too surprised to learn that there are big forums pretty much devoted to your jeans and how often to wash them

TBH though despite all the hoopla about fading and whatnot, the reasons not to wash your jeans often are:

1) as long as you're not pooping your pants, pants develop odors much more slowly than shirts, and jeans in general are a pretty loose breathable cotton weave so that helps w/ odor too.

2) jeans are rugged wear so they tend to actually look better when they're more beat up than when they're clean and pressed

3) if you like having jeans dark it will keep them dark much longer

like i said i think dark jeans are overexposed and i'm getting more and more into natural shades of jeans

so like, this is what denim heads are trying to do

but what i'm saying is i think as much fun as it is trying to get your jeans to look like that, i'd rather have something more natural like this (that's what i mean by mom jeans color)

Yeah unless you have denim that is dyed with natural indigo the no washing is sort of pointless, I think. The reason I don't wash mine is like valid said, to get the creases and wear before the bottom legs start fading as well. But really I love my jeans just as much before the creases start setting in, I sort of like the process. I've never tried Nudie or many of the designer jeans that say they are raw denim because I don't believe them. My favorites were a pair of dead stock Big E's I used to own that I think we're from the 50's. I bought them in the early 90's before the denim craze came around to the states. Wish I hadn't sold them. I also had a pair of Evisu that I washed and dried and eventually they looked awful, I guess like Mom jeans, so I've never dried my jeans now and rarely wash them.

forgot the h in your name, sorry

all good

definitely i would machine-dry my jeans though, that is a good way to destroy them

would not

Man, people are super serious about jeans! I wear them more than any other item of clothing so it's time to invest instead of just repeatedly buying $50 once they inevitably start to sag and lighten too much. So I guess you'd recommend buying them on the tight side?

My friend who got me into jeans in the 90's even buys vintage hand soap and using a wash board on his really expensive vintage Levis and other japanese jeans. There was a line of replica Levis in the early 2000's that I really liked. I don't really keep up with jeans like I used to but they lasted longer than any other denim I had. The problem I always have is the holes that form on the but near the back pocket or a hole in the pocket from my wallet. If the denim is very thick like real raw denim or old Levis this rarely happens.

If you're buying 100% cotton jeans that aren't pre-shrunk you want to buy them tight otherwise they will stretch out and not have a nice form a year from now. even slightly shrunk raw denim with loosen up after wearing.

I hang all my clothes to dry as it is
Ive been wearing dark jeans since the 90s and I'm not gonna change now dammit

If I were buying $400 jeans i'd buy the special soap too

e if you like how a pair of jeans fits, buy one size smaller in the waist because it'll stretch an inch in the waist

if one size smaller is too tight anywhere but the waist you need a different cut (otherwise even at the bigger size it's going to end up disproportionate - you will either have comfortable waist and too tight everything else or baggy waist and everything else ok)

if they're stretch blend (not 100 percent) they won't really stretch so just buy your size

actually jacob i think you're off there

unwashed unshrunk jeans (unsanforized) are "shrink to fit" so you buy one or two sizes bigger and then rinse because they'll shrink an inch or more

then as you wear them, they stretch and you when they're too stretched you wash again.

Doesn't it depend or whether you washed jeans in hot or cold water? The more I think about this the more confused I'm becoming. I think I was off.

no, the fibers contract when they dry. hot water will shrink fabrics if it's as hot as the air in your dryer but in general i don't think that's true for most washers (even on hot)

like boiled wool is shrunk but it's literally boiled for hours.

evaporation also shrinks jeans, which is why they'll shrink even if they dry on a line, but the faster you set them the more they'll shrink.

tbh though i don't think clothing shrinkage is well understood at the molecular level

er faster you dry them

like i keep reading stuff like this

Moving from one state to another requires crossing an energy barrier. It even takes energy to get back to the lowest-energy, most disordered state. Hot temperatures in laundering give the fibers the energy that allows them to change state so that the long polymer chains scroll back up again.

which is basically the same as saying "HEAT MAKES IT GO"

wow just wow at jeans physics discussions

eh call it textile science

no, too boring

ok then call it jeanetics

My jeans always wind up needing a belt after a while, even if they fit nicely elsewhere. All I want is a nice slim pair of jeans that will fit in the waist :-(

belts are part of wearing pants imo

Who doesn't wear a belt??