jeans

Full Count contest jeans… nearing 14 months of wear.

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Beautiful pair of Samurai 5000vx’s I found on superfuture… contemplating getting that model once I have some dough, but I don’t know how the fit is. It’s either them, Samurai 0500xx, Eternal 811, or Evisu 2000 No. 1’s…

I entered a jean contest last winter. 100 people bought the same pair of Japanese raw denim and at the culmination of one year of wear (which is today), we are all going to be judged to see who got the best fades… and the winner gets a free pair of jeans! (retail value $300)

So basically I wore these things daily for a whole year and didn’t wash them. I think they look pretty good… not sure if they’re good enough to win the contest, but at least I have a nice looking pair of jeans to wear for years to come.

You can check out the other contestant’s pairs here.

Day 1

Day 69

Day 170

Day 365

More pics on my Flickr.

I have 1 month left to go in my year long jean contest. Might not be the winning pair, but I think they look alright:

A majority of my life I didn’t really pay much attention to what I wore. I would mainly wear a t-shirt or sweatshirt reflecting one of my interests (a band, sports team, etc…), a pair of pants that I got at the mall, and a cheap pair of Nikes or Airwalks.

I had always been somewhat envious of the kids at school that wore “cool” clothes… Abercrombie, Quicksilver, Element, and the rest of that elite bunch of brands. I would have considered buying clothes from those companies, but I couldn’t justify the price.

I was a short kid until I finally grew during my first year or two in college. I figured that if I were to buy any expensive threads, they might be too small for me in a month if I started growing and I wouldn’t be able to wear them anymore.

Once I finally grew to my full height, I thought to myself “Shit… now I can buy myself something nice at it will actually last a few years.” I could finally justify dumping money into my wardrobe.

The first aspect of my look that I thought I should improve was my jeans. I thought skinny jeans were “cool” (I always think of how my Granny says cool when I use it in quotes…it makes the word sound less and more cool at the same time), so I bought a few pairs of skinny jeans off ebay (Matix and Krew were the brands).

I probably looked like an idiot (and still do), but I thought I was styling in my new duds. However, being as neurotic as I am, I had to see if I could get some even better pairs.

After wasting an insubordinate amount of time rumaging through Google, I came across MyNudie forums. Nudie is a designer brand of jeans that specialize in raw denim. It’s denim that hasn’t been prewashed (as all jeans you find in a store will be). They were supposed to be better quality and worn daily without washing to get unique fades.

This intrigued me, that over time your jeans could improve. The more time you put into them, the better they’d look. After some research, I found out that Nudies weren’t the best quality, but they did lead me to finding the Superfuture denim message board.

This place is basically the Mecca of all things denim. They mainly specialize in discussion about expensive Japanese brands. To say the least, I was blow away by the pictures of the well worn pairs on the site. They were like nothing I had every seen…I knew that these were the kinds of jeans I must have.

Here are a few of the first images I saw that got me stoked on high end denim:

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These kinds of jeans will run you in the area of 300 bills… so you have to be committed to purchasing them. It can be difficult to choose the right size too, just because when you buy the jeans they are raw, meaning they haven’t touched water, and thus have not been shrunked down to their true size. When you give them a hot wash, they may not shrink to measurements suitable for you.

I’ll admit I’ve made mistakes sizing on a few pairs and had to let them go… it sucks, but you learn.

At the moment I am in a contest where 100 people bought the same model of jean at the same time and everyone wears them for a year. At the end of the year, all contestants submit pictures of their evolution. Whoevers jeans are judged to have faded the best over the year win a new pair of jeans.

The contest ends in about a month… not really sure if I have a chance at winning, but I’m happy with how my jeans have turned out. The biggest thing is that they still fit great after a year, which means I can keep on wearing them and they’ll only get nicer in the months and years to come.

Once you buy a pair of Japanese denim, I don’t even know if it’s possible to go back to regular brands… they are just so much nicer. The denim is unlike anything you’ve ever felt before and the fade patterns are unmatched by any predistressed jeans.

I justify the price because I wear them every day…yeah they do get pretty nasty after a month, but most people don’t notice… ;)