Shopping for jeans used to be easy. One day, you'd notice a rip on the top of the left pant leg, near the crotch -- the same as always -- and you'd know it was time.
A week later, you'd find yourself in a fluorescent-lit store with cheap industrial carpets. A store devoted entirely to jeans. Apart from a couple of dried-out belts, there was nothing else in the place. Just racks and racks of denim pants organized by waist, hip and leg measurements (this was back when those things meant something). You'd find your size in your favoured brand (there were only three options: Edwin, Lee and Levis), try it on just to make sure, and that was that.
Compare that experience to today. These days buying a pair of jeans -- theoretically the sliced bread of clothes -- requires a degree in fashion marketing and a personality test.
The number of new brands is seemingly infinite, each one the junior editor or "sister" to an older, trendy brand you've never heard of. And denim, which used to just be a rugged, durable form of raw cotton, is now as diverse and rarefied as heirloom cheese or gourmet coffee. In the old days, you bought a pair of blue jeans. Today, you buy a pair of preworked, skinny-fit, fair-trade, navy-rinse, medium-rise, top-stitched, redemption-style long 'n' leans.
Case in point: A couple weeks ago, I walked into a new store in my neighbourhood. I was in the market for a pair of jeans. Not because a rip had appeared in my old ones, but because my old ones had faded to an unfashionable shade of pale blue, the result of a trendy distressing process to which almost all new jeans now fall victim.
Stepping inside, one would never know the store sold denim. It looked more like an army surplus store crossed with a dude-ranch tuck shop. Lumpy parkas hung on headless mannequins over rows of used cowboy boots, marked up for their authentic "worn" look.
A cute guy wearing a vintage Chinese military cap slouched up to me and mumbled, "Howzitgoin?"
The next thing I remember I was standing on the sidewalk holding a pair of jeans and a bill for $200. The denims (obscure brand name: Loomstate) were beautiful (dark blue-black, soft cotton), and when I tried them on at home I was pleased to note that they fit. The only glitch was the washing instructions. I found them printed on an unbleached paper card tied to one of the belt loops by a piece of twine.
"We think it's best to wash these with a little shampoo while wearing them in the shower or bathtub. You'll notice the indigo will bleed so don't spend all day in there. While they are wet, bend your knees to stretch them out, but don't strain yourself. When done, simply hang to dry in the sun."
Pardon?
The next day, I phoned up the Loomstate offices in New York and spoke to Scott Hahn, one of the company's founding partners.
"Dude," I said, "what's with the washing instructions?"
"You don't want them to dry with the wrong wrinkles," he explained. "You want them to dry in your leg form. Avoiding detergent and dryers tightens the fibres, so you get a closed fibre, with an intensely personalized sculptural fading instead of the uniformed fading and a bloomed yarn, which creates a hairy, fuzzy aesthetic. That's something serious denim people want to avoid."
Loomstate, I learned, uses only organic, pesticide-free cotton to make what they describe as "responsible clothes" for people who are "committed to treading lightly on the earth." On its website (http://www.loomstate.org), you can watch an interview with an organic dairy farmer talking about how much his cows like eating the organic cottonseed byproduct that is produced in the making of Loomstate jeans. What this has to do with washing your jeans while wearing them in the shower is anybody's guess, but it seemed credible enough to convince me that the washing instructions are no joke: Loomstate is a post-ironic brand.
I resolved to deal with the washing problem when I came to it, which was a few weeks later. My jeans were feeling a bit slippery to begin with, but when I spilled a big Hollandaise glob on my lap at brunch, I knew there was no escaping it. They were officially too gross to wear. I wanted clean jeans, but the last thing I needed was bloomed yarn and wrinkles in wrong places.
So I poured a warm bath and hopped in, organic jeans and all.
The effect was immediate. The denim suctioned itself to my thighs, creating an enormous belching air pocket across my hips. I remembered how at summer camp they made us swim across the bay in our clothes to determine whether we would drown if the canoe capsized during a trip. When a kid started to sink, they'd fish her out with a boathook. I remember hating that feeling -- the heavy, hyper-gravity of being wet with your clothes on. So much for "treading lightly on the earth."
I miserably lathered up with tea-tree oil shampoo and rinsed. No more flaky scalp for these jeans Shivering upright in the bath as the water drained, I found myself longing for the old days, when coffee was coffee and cheese was orange.
Buying jeans used to be about buying jeans. Now, it's a moral choice, a litmus test of your personal style and social conscience. It's about character and commitment, and unorthodox laundry methods.
All in all, I suppose it's a small price to pay for fair-trade, organic, low-rise, responsible raw-cotton Loomstate Fluxes. The garment formerly known as jeans.
Join the Discussion: