200 days!

To no ones excitement but my own, today is a special day. I have now worn this current pair of Raleigh Denim for 200 times without washing. Gross? maybe. Smelly? at times. Awesome looking? absolutely! The reason something as ridiculous as this would happen is because youre not supposed to wash raw denim until youre ready to set the dye in. Good god, what does that even mean? Well, it means that unlike most jeans, raw denim is unwashed ('raw') after the cotton is dyed and the jeans are made, allowing the wearer to impart their lifestyle via fading and holes produced in the product. As youll notice in the photos below, how you live is shown on your jeans. The top photo is my wallet pocket and as you can see, the outline of the wallet has been nicely worn in with a hole starting where the most stress is on the denim. The photo below shows the left leg of the jeans with creases faded in both at the knees and thighs. This process will happen with any jeans but prewashed jeans will take longer to show the fading (if they are of high quality) and usually have their own 'wash' when you purchase them making it less of a personal wear pattern.

 

 

 

All denim is not created equal

Tis true- as I walk around and admire denim in different stores around these parts (rocky mountain region and greater northwest), I notice two trends: excitement for denim is up, and so is misinformation. When you go to buy a new pair of jeans, there are many things to look at to ensure a wonderful adventure together. Most importantly, understand that labels these days mean less than they ever have. Just because your favorite designer makes jeans now doesnt mean they are worth having. Top of your list should be quality of fabric. Without  having to talk to the shops salesperson, you can quickly discern between a good pair and decent pair simply by the fabric. If you look close enough, you should be able to see inconsistencies with the threads themselves. For math nerds, youre looking for a standard deviation away from the average size/circumference of thread for the entire make up of the fabric. For everyone else, you want to see that the warp and weft lines are not perfectly straight. Notice in the photo below that neither the white nor blue lines are of even thickness...this is good!

 

What that means the denim was woven with ring spun cotton, creating a longer lasting fabric than if it had been made with open ended cotton. This is not just inherent to raw denim but to all quality denim, both jackets and pants. Almost as important, or maybe just as, is the quality of cotton used in the process; which brings us back to labels. Labels these days are more deceiving than ever before because 'high quality' designers are now producing low quality products in places like China to increase their profit margins. If you check out the glossary, you can see the differences in staple length and understand what that means. Essentially, companies who once used quality fabric are now allowing lines of clothing to be produced with American short staple or even Asian short staple cotton; producing a drastically inferior product for the same cost. These brands are all around and even recommended in some places and on some sites. Do you homework, check country of origin, look at the fabric, and in the end, you will be far more pleased with your purchase than if you hadnt.