OT Friday Post: With all this talk of artificial distressing….

With all this talk about artificially aged inserts and watch parts, and the constant comparisons to jeans, Id thought Id post this.Im a long time vintage Levis collector, and work in the garment industry. I love to collect objects that get better with age, hence the collecting of watches and garments amongst other things. Heres a pair of 1930s Levis 501XX jeans I own, They are very rare, hard to find, and impossible to replicate. They are worn in perfectly. The natural indigo color, yarn character, and contrast are impossible to re-create....


But as in any vintage collectable, there is a high demand and a short supply Here are some images I took from a top American denim factory that show a small fraction of the processes involved in distressing high-end jeans. As a purist myself, I only wear vintage Levis or new shrink-to-fit rigid selvedge jeans, and wear them down naturally. There are others who are not that patient. Heres an abbreviated version of the processes and some images, I hope you find them interesting....

First, a pair of high quality selvedge jeans are dipped in either a resin or heavy starch and let to dry about 60%. They are then put partially wet onto inflatable or stiff forms and the Whiskers (or wear lines) are recreated by hand to match the contours of the body. Sometimes a bendable tube is inserted into the legs in order to hold the bent shape in place.





Next they are flash dried with a special localized drier or in an industrial walk-in oven to stiffen the starch/resin and the garments become crispy in order to hold the shapes of the wrinkles.





The jeans are very stiff and put back onto the air inflated forms and are sanded using multiple tools and types of sand paper to create a series of highlights, fills and shadows.






Once the garments are sanded, they will go into a special washing machine with pumice stones (stone washing) and be washed with a series of chemicals to bring the color down. There are tons of methods and chemicals that create different effects and multiple baths are required.




After wash, they are dried.



After drying, they will have tints, hand pigments, and stains etc applied by hand.




The garments then get another set of 3D applications and baking.


Some finished jeans
Original Levis on the right, replicas on the left.



Thought this might be interesting to some of you.
Glenn