What's Behind The Cult Following Of Japanese Denim? Really Good Jeans.
It turns out, there's a reason for obsession.
Published
Between songs about them, contests to see whose fade the best, and half-hour long videos dedicated to them, it’s safe to say that Japanese denim is a fashion phenomenon. For a long time, I didn’t understand the perpetual internet debates on how you should wash your jeans, how often you should wash your jeans, or if you should even wash them at all. With things such as the clickbait headline claiming the CEO of Levi’s said jeans should never be washed, it was clear to me that there was a world of denim that existed far from reality. After all, they’re just jeans. You buy them at American Eagle or Levi’s or your local thrift store and they get the job done. It’s not like they’re magical traveling pants. Right?
Wrong. Anyone who begins to look beyond the lyocell and elastane filled jeans that continue to dominate the market will be met with terms such as raw, selvedge, sanforized, and unsanforized. These terms may also be familiar to people who are old enough to remember when US denim manufacturing was a thing. These terms can be confusing and aren’t really part of the American fashion lexicon, especially since the rise of stretch denim over the past few decades. As the speed and volume of American consumerism increases, knowledge of and care for where our clothes come from and how and from what they are constructed decreases. Denim is no exception.