And now their wash has faded
Every pair of jeans tells a story.
Yes, I’m aware you are cringing and that is a cheap marketing cliché a brand would use to market expensive jeans. But when it comes to quality denim, it’s not wrong.
A screenshot from my old Tumblr
Nearly 10 years ago and at the height of the #menswear movement, I purchased my first pair of selvedge jeans. I saved for months and walked into Self Edge San Francisco where I picked out a pair of 3sixteen ST-100Xs. The jeans cost $220 at the time ($230 today) and were made with raw Kuroki Mills selvedge denim and featured a leather tag by Tanner Goods. Self Edge even threw in complimentary chainstitched hemming via their vintage Union Special machine at the store.
Some of the earliest photos I can find of me wearing my 3Sixteens
In the beginning, I babied them. I wore them seldomly and continued to wear an older pair of Levi’s as I had as my day-to-day beaters. But jeans are meant to be broken in and as time grew on I became more relaxed and wore them more often. Eventually, the Levi’s wore out and the 3sixteens became my sole pair of indigo denim.
I’ve worn these jeans everywhere and for practically everything. I’ve worn them going to work in Dublin, Ireland and on stage performing improv in the Mission in San Francisco. I’ve worn them hiking in Marin on a Saturday and then leisurely to the farmer’s market on Sunday. They had so much wear that at one point, the crotch blew out. But instead of throwing them away, I sent them to Denim Therapy and had them repaired and wore them more.
I would be surprised if the average person paid attention to their denim. For most, jeans are worn simply because they’re comfortable, reliable, rugged, and quite frankly dependable. But if you think closely about where you’ve worn your jeans, you’ll realize that in a sense they’ve been historians of your life.
They’ve been in my wardrobe throughout my life: from when I was a care free adult dating Chelsea, when we got married, and then my transition into fatherhood. My right knee has developed a huge hole and it was only until recently that I realized it’s from when I kneel to talk to my children.
However, I’m at the point where the amount of distressing has gone from unique to concerning. Several rivets have popped off and I can feel the holes getting bigger each time I put these jeans on. It’s that time where you realize you shouldn’t wear these to work or around your wife’s parents because you can see your underwear from the outside. It’s also at the time where the cost of repairs finally outweighs the price of buying a new pair.
But I’m okay with that - it’s been 10 years! The International Fabric Institute Fair Claims Guide estimates that the average life of denim is 2-3 years. If you want to do the cost analysis, at $220 for the initial investment and a conservative guess that I wear these 30% of the year, that’s about $4.98 each wear. Not bad in the long run, especially since I’ve kept 3 other pairs of jeans from hitting the landfills.
But now it’s time to say goodbye, I’m a creature of habit who doesn’t like to mess with a winning formula. I recently bought another pair of ST-100Xs, this time on Grailed. I look forward to the next 10 years.
