Cold Summer

I can see that, based on the actual cool faded vintage jeans I've seen, the best-looking ones (e.g., Goldenstatevintage on Instagram, who's always finding stuff in abandoned farmhouses and that sort of thing) seem to have been worn by farmers or ranchers. Lots of dust, dirt, sand, etc. doing that kind of work, but relatively little wear to the seat and knees. I tend to think that the nature of the work gets the nice fading at the creases, while the dirt and dust has more of an impact on the overall color and texture of the jeans. I've never been convinced that commonly suggested environmental factors (SE Asia heat and humidity, snow, etc.) has any impact at all on contrast. On the other hand I'm just a boring suburban dad who works in front of a computer, and I'm still quite pleased with how my jeans turn out most of the time.

This comment reminds me how a while ago, I gave serious thought to the Best Jobs For Fading Denim. The best one I came up with was "professional moving service," for both jeans and jackets. If you've moving boxes and furniture, you're doing a lot of bending over, squatting, lifting, carrying, and so on, but you're not really getting that dirty or getting weird substances all over your clothes necessitating more frequent washing (hence why something like "working on an oil field" wouldn't be a great suggestion.) It's hard, physical work, but not really all that dangerous, and less destructive/strenuous than other blue-collar professions. There's also not necessarily a ton of going down on your knees, which tends to destroy your jeans faster/be a downside of some blue-collar trades. These would seem like ideal conditions for getting good fades - though it's possible that holding/carrying stuff right up against your garments could lead to some unexpected/undesirable fading. Anybody on here ever fade denim working for a moving service? Let us know how it turned out!

Just got an email that the Late S40s jacket I preordered a while back had shipped, I'm excited. Never wore a Type I before so it'll be a nice change of pace, and the price compared to similar jackets by Warehouse, Sugar Cane, Freewheelers, CSF is very appealing. I'm planning to wear this for the next Redline Rally, so I probably won't start actually wearing until next year but I'll share some pics and impressions after it gets here.

They look great Aho, I saw when S&S put the new run up for sale and briefly contemplated getting a pair but eh, my TCB Late S40s are close enough to that vibe for me (and, also importantly, already paid for ). I'm looking forward to seeing how the latest run of Ooe denim evolves on Sufu denizens, though.

Great fit on those Ben, I've always been curious to see how that AI denim fades. I had a pair of 3005-AI but I ended up selling them before I even washed as I prefer a bit longer rise on my jeans nowadays.

I could be wrong about this, but based on the previous couple S&S releases I believe the four-digit number at the end of Ooe products is the month and year it was made; in this case 01/25, January 2025.

Flat Head Raspberry Native Check shirt, Hollows belt, Flat Head 3003xx jeans, Converse 70s Chucks.

My 6002W jacket at something like 4-6 months of wear. The other day I washed it for the first time since I started wearing it.

NB MIUSA 995. i bought these back in 2017 and for years I wore them quite infrequently. They seemed hot and stuffy at the time, and I also seemed to constantly get static electricity zapped when wearing these, especially getting out of a car after driving, which never happened with any other sneakers I wore. The last three years or so, though, they’ve become probably my most worn pair of sneakers, and they’re still going strong. It seems like they broke in somehow, they feel much more comfortable and no longer stuffy, and although static zaps do still happen on occasion, it's far less frequent now.

@Double 0 SoulThanks for sharing, I really enjoy hearing your takes on the hobby as somebody who's been through the whole collector thing and beyond. I'm much the same way with things like electronics, for all the flak Apple (often justifiably) gets, I've gotten a ton of longevity out of their stuff. I've been using the same Macbook for ten years now and it still works just fine, and in that same time I used an iPhone 6S from 2015-2021, and an SE from 2021-present. It's tricky working around planned obsolescence in so many things. One thing discouraging me from going toward more collector impulses is that I can very easily get decision fatigue, when I have too many choices of what to wear I start to get anxious and have trouble deciding what to wear, and at that point it stops being fun, so that keeps me in check. I usually wear just one pair of jeans for a long stretch, and mix in a pair of chinos, salt and pepper trousers, and maybe a faded pair 1-2 days a week. I have four pairs of boots, a few pairs of sneakers, a few jackets and sweaters, and a bunch of shirts and tees (relative to the rest of my wardrobe), which is where most of the variety occurs. I find this gives me enough variety to keep from getting bored, while keeping it easy to make good outfits without having to think too hard about it. I tend to make new purchases based on probably-too-elaborate internal mental calculation about filling a perceived gap in my wardrobe, or attempting to upgrade some aspect or other (for instance, recently I think, maybe I should try to get a black lace-up boot to replace the function of my black 70s Chucks I've worn heavily for the last ~7 years, like a Viberg Service boot, Lofgren M-43, or Combat boot.) A lot of the time this involves waiting until just the right moment or circumstances to buy some expensive thing, with my Flat Head leather jacket being probably the standout example of this. Some folks go through dozens of black leather jackets trying to find the right one, and I waited until something with just the right measurements and my desired specs appeared, and managed to get it at a good price, and I've been quite satisfied having taken this approach. Another example, I'd buy a pair of SCSC 1943 jeans if Self Edge or Franklin & Poe puts them on discount or sale, to wear Someday, but not right now at retail price. I get probably more enjoyment out of the clothing hobby than I really should as a married guy with kids and all that, but I guess I find that it helps to have something I can enjoy when I'm in the midst of hysterical toddler behavior or doing chores or some other tedious aspect of everyday life. I have a lovely Rickenbacker bass that's surely the nicest thing I own right now, but given the present circumstances I hardly ever get to play it. I'm always wearing a good pair of jeans and a cozy shirt though, so the clothes are easier to justify to some extent because the demands of family life don't stop me from using/enjoying it. If I were you, I'd take one of my awesome banged-up pairs of jeans and try my hand at home repairs to make them wearable for weekends and casual wear. Getting them professionally repaired would surely be prohibitively expensive, but doing it yourself might be fun, and should be cheap, and I'm sure the results would earn you massive rep on here almost no matter how awkwardly it turned out at first. 😅

That's exactly the reasoning the cigar-chomping robber barons want you to use! 😆 The way I look at it, it's practically impossible to be a conscientious/sustainable/etc. consumer across every category of stuff that you buy for a variety of reasons, but it seems reasonable to pick a couple things where you think you can (or want) to support better labor conditions/environmental practices/whatever it may be, and focus on that. After I got married and could no longer indiscriminately throw cash at constant expensive clothing purchases, I got a lot more interested in trying to maximize my bang-for-the-buck factor: buying items that were high quality and would last a long time, but were also affordable. I found the trick to be getting secondhand purchases from Japanese sites like Mercari and Yahoo Auctions, where in particular I upgraded my shirt situation over the last few years by finding mostly Flat Head shirts in 9/10 condition for cheap on these sites. A variety of factors contributed, like a weak yen and Flat Head being at a pretty low ebb in the Amekaji consciousness compared to brands like Warehouse or Freewheelers, to push the value down so far, but it sure worked out well for me. I'm also big on brands like Denime, TCB, and Sugar Cane which offer very high value for the price. With shirts, it was first-hand experience that "converted" me, back in fall 2011 I went to a local select shop where I lived in Japan and handled that red Flat Head Native Check western shirt and it was evident to me that every single aspect of the thing was miles ahead of any casual shirt I'd ever seen or touched. That being said, I'm pretty discriminating when it comes to shirts and there are a lot of shirts by high-end Japanese brands that don't have fabrics or other aspects which are really any different from what you'd find at a department store. I got an IH flannel back in fall of 2019 and had it for several years. I never liked it very much. Although warm, the fabric reminded me more of a dense kind of blanket than a conventional flannel, and although it had nice colors the weave itself was uninteresting. The Iron Heart fit didn't work well for my body type, but that obviously varies from one person to the next. Where Iron Heart really lost points for me was in the construction, the stitching was bright orange polyester that never softened up or broke in. Though the shirt's construction and quality exuded technical precision, I felt it was completely soulless. In comparison, my Flat Head flannels have much more of a handmade quality, between the selvedge fabrics with tons of texture and personality, and the all-cotton stitching done on vintage machines which has a much more pleasing tactile feel and comfortable break in over time. I bought most of them secondhand for a fraction of Iron Heart prices, making them a vastly better value for me. Several of my Flat Head shirts I've worn since 2011 and they're still going strong, and others I bought secondhand were from the mid-late 2000s yet with little sign of wearing out. I don't think IH shirts are objectively bad at all, and the factors which mean a great deal to me, are things that are probably irrelevant to most other people, but it is hard for me to justify the price for what it is. If new Iron Heart shirts cost $200-250 or less and there was less hype surrounding them, I think the whole situation would be a bit less of an eyebrow-raiser for me. I just wish more people knew there were other options for nice shirts out there which are a lot less than Iron Heart.

New Denime sweatshirt, after a wash and dry. Love the fit, jersey is super soft and the perfect weight for wearing over a tee, as shown, or layering. Denime’s jeans aren’t long enough for me but I’m happy to wear their tops.

Lovely fades Ben, I’ve found that my best fades come over a long stretch of time. Speaking of which… I’ll take more pics soon, but here’s a peek at my Flat Head 7002W shirt, ten years after I bought it.

Flat Head houndstooth flannel, jacket, and 3003xx jeans, Hollows belt, Wesco Mister Lou boots.

This is my experience as well, I bathe every day and my lower body doesn't tend to produce much in the way of odor, thankfully. If I went for a run, or mowed my yard on a scorching summer day, my T-shirt will stink by the time I'm done, but I don't do that kind of highly strenuous, sweaty activity in jeans anyway. If my jeans actually smelled or were gross my wife would complain and insist I wash them for sure, but she never minds at all. When it comes to jeans getting gross, there's a big difference between internal and external dirtiness. External you can spot clean, like if you get some mud or mustard or whatever on your jeans, depending on the situation. But there's not much you can do about internal, if you just sweat nonstop. The latter category really varies a lot from person to person based on biological factors more than anything else, probably.