The Perils of White Jeans

I’m a fan of white jeans. Some people only dabble with them in the summer, but I’m a year-round white jean kind-of-guy. Like grey pants or light blue button downs, they go with everything from sports coats to leather jackets.

The worst thing about white jeans is that they attract more stains than the Trump administration. Okay, that’s too many stains. But they do seem to be a magnet for every type of blemish whether it be dust from a dirty chair or rogue ketchup from a burger. Getting white jeans dirty is inevitable and menswear outlets will tell you that you need to embrace it.

This was easier to accept with my first pair. I bought them on sale in 2011 from Lands’ End Canvas and wore them all the time. They cost less than $30 so I didn’t worry about getting them dirty. If they did get permanently stained, I could always replace them.

But despite being cheaply made and inexpensive, those Lands’ End jeans held up well for over eight years. I only decided to replace them because I was thirty pounds lighter and they didn’t fit anymore. So the search was on for a new pair and like any other menswear nerd, I wanted to get something nicer.

I picked up a pair of ecru (that’s officially the fancy way of saying “off-white”) jeans from Drake’s last summer. They cost significantly more than my pair from Lands’ End but also had a noticeable improvement in quality. Made in England by Blackhorse Lane Ateliers, the jeans are made of high quality selvedge denim and feature nice details like copper rivets. They also have a higher rise, which makes them look better with a sports coat.

However, Drake’s white jeans are still white jeans. And while I did pay more for quality, that didn’t mean that they were going to stain any less than my old ones. Plus, now I live with a toddler who likes to use me as her personal paper towel.

I wasn’t bothered by stains on my white jeans before but I fuss over these constantly. It’s probably because I paid more, but I also wear these jeans more with tailored clothes and I think it looks sloppy if they get too dirty.

But to my dismay, my obsession with keeping these jeans clean seems to have become a detriment to them.

The first issue is that the leather patch on the back, while a quality detail, bleeds on the jeans every time I wash them. I typically wash my casual jeans after a few wears (okay jeez - maybe more than a few wears). But with my white jeans, I’m lucky if I can wear them twice without getting some sort of noticeable stain on them.

I’m not sure if this is bleeding is because I wash them so frequently or if it’s because I sometimes add cleaning solutions like Oxiclean and color-safe bleach to the wash. To add insult to injury, sometimes when I hang my jeans to dry, I’ll find that the leather dye will drip on other parts of the jeans as well, which means I have to wash them over again. Thankfully this bleeding comes out if I spot clean it, but it happens almost every time I wash them

I’ve also developed some stains that simply won’t come out despite my best efforts of cleaning them. The same thing happened with my Lands’ End jeans, but again, it didn’t bother me because they were so cheap.

Recently, I decided to go all in and soak my Drake’s jeans in Oxiclean. While this did help remove some of the stains, it also significantly dried out the leather patch, which means I’m now worried that the patch will continue to bleed all over the place AND crack.

From top to bottom: What the patch looked like originally on my Drake’s jeans (this is from a pair of hardly worn indigo Drake’s Jeans), a naturally worn in patch from a pair of 3Sixteen, and the monstrosity that is the patch from my white Drake’s j… — From top to bottom: What the patch looked like originally on my Drake’s jeans (this is from a pair of hardly worn indigo Drake’s Jeans), a naturally worn in patch from a pair of 3Sixteen, and the monstrosity that is the patch from my white Drake’s jeans.

I still love these jeans, but can’t help but reminisce of the days where I could wear my white jeans nonchalantly and carefree. When these jeans do wear out, maybe I’ll be better served in picking up another pair of cheap white jeans. In the meantime, I’ll keep wearing them and pray to God they don’t get stained or disintegrate in the next wash.