Denim Blunders, Reflections and General Nonsense.

[nick682]

15 hours ago, 1fookntitefd said:

So has anyone panic buying denim with all of the tariff drama going on?

I panic bought a pair of warehouse 1001xx, that should be my last denim purchase for a while. I got them from Takeoff and they shipped incredibly quick!

[beautiful_FrEaK]

2 hours ago, Broark said:

Yesterday I unexpectedly came across a pair of jeans that I’d had my eye out for years on Yahoo, ended up winning the auction so we’ll see if there are any tariff impacts. 

Isn't there still the "de-minimis" rule active?

[ATWM]

The word panic implies some degree of irrational response. 

I know someone who is generally a very rational and restrained top economist. They just bought a car they were going to wait a few years on, specifically because of current events. Generally that would be quite out of character. 

For my part my EMS parcel came last week without trouble (which was not a reaction buy), there is one other one still making it’s way through - my curiosity about the Silverstone Groundalls WW2 pair couldn’t withstand the chaos. I don’t expect any issue there either. Right now the de minimis exemption is active but is scheduled to end May 2 for good from China and Hong Kong and there aren’t concrete plans to end it from elsewhere though that is certainly on the tale. 

Good chance for those in the US our money will be worth less and the jeans price will be higher pretty soon though. The real issue is the stability of the dollar. Who knows what will happen but buckle up! 

[Broark]

1 hour ago, beautiful_FrEaK said:

Isn't there still the "de-minimis" rule active?

I think so, but honestly who knows if it will be by the time they ship to me at this rate. 

[beautiful_FrEaK]

20 hours ago, ATWM said:

Silverstone Groundalls WW2

Looking forward to your opinion!

[mlwdp]

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/why-favorite-pair-jeans-lot-202414109.html

[Double 0 Soul]

Oh no.. hackers have brought down 4Chan

Even taking into account it's alt-right tendencies, culture wars, pr0n and racism.. their 'Denim & Workwear General' thread is still more popular than sufu..

Oh well.. i suppose we've still got the Denim Megathread on Something Awful..

[Double 0 Soul]

I've never 'followed' anyone online.. it sounds weird af, like i'd be one step away from throwing acid in their face..

What are these folks doing which is so important that i need to be following them? i'm sure they're not curing cancer or anything significant? .. is it like the Big Brother effect? .. and if so will there be a future Gogglebox effect where I watch someone who's following someone online? .. huf! future sounds bleak?

I mean.. I like to hear what you guys are up to, same goes for my friends and neighbours because I’m invested in those people but what the 8 billion other' people are doing outside of my community.. I honestly couldn't care less

[smoothsailor]

I guess it’s like reading a magazine, of your interest.

have to say the world seemed to be better when we still read magazines

[Double 0 Soul]

I like denim so I’m a member of a denim forum.. I like bikes so I’m a member of a bike forum, are these other folks just doing a better job of it?

I don’t have much more time  I can afford to waste..

[Dr_Heech]

1 hour ago, Double 0 Soul said:

I've never 'followed' anyone online.. it sounds weird af, like i'd be one step away from throwing acid in their face..

What are these folks doing which is so important that i need to be following them? i'm sure they're not curing cancer or anything significant? .. is it like the Big Brother effect? .. and if so will there be a future Gogglebox effect where I watch someone who's following someone online? .. huf! future sounds bleak?

I mean.. I like to hear what you guys are up to, same goes for my friends and neighbours because I’m invested in those people but what the 8 billion other' people are doing outside of my community.. I honestly couldn't care less

I was like that with the idea of people watching other people play video/console games l mean wtf, just play the game yourself! Having a 17 year old has educated/enlightened me since.

Tbh Neal, l only use Instagram for research/info/images of old denim (well and maybe some dodgy reels) and Facebook for entertainment only (comedy mostly but also old lorries). I rarely post on lg now and never post on FB.

Like you l only come here now for real world exchanges on the internet.

 

[ATWM]

Instagram is more or less a digital shopping mall at this point. You could tell in the early days. I was early on facebook and not so much on IG, but it got to the point where - as a photographer - that was actually where you got decent jobs (for awhile). When it was still new(ish) art buyers and photo editors actually would use it as a source. That was a poor decision - I always felt like IG was not and could not be a portfolio but I was in the minority with that sentiment. I always tried to forge working relationships with personal (and not social media) contact, but for awhile I played the game. The reason I got on it was for work, but it wasn’t supposed to feel like or look like it - but it still was. 

I’m not alone in that sense. That happened in so many industries. It has become an almost necessity of small business / creative, because that’s where so much of the public goes to see what exists. You need to be visible, somehow.

I fuckin hate it, I am happier being off the platform, but to be honest, deleting all of my Meta etc. accounts is a privilege in its own right. Most of my colleagues would love to but cannot fathom it. It’s become like an extension of themselves and needed to exist in the digital world where they actually bring in the revenue that pays their rent. So yea, it’s pretty shit in a lot of ways but that’s the world we live in.

[Double 0 Soul]

1 hour ago, smoothsailor said:

I guess it’s like reading a magazine, of your interest.

have to say the world seemed to be better when we still read magazines

I used to read Volksworld Magazine, MBUK, Sidewalk Surfer, Ride.. amongst others, usually cover to cover many times over so there was always room for me to consume more media, but like denim, these^ were all niche subject matter and when similar magazines jumped on the bandwagon.. there was only a certain number of VWs, MTBs, Skateboarders... in the world so all it did was dilute the quality... like we see in the denimworld but it isn't just one extra magazine to read, it's the opinions of millions all vying for your clicks so the quality has diluted to almost neutral.

Are $15 jeans from Wallmart better than SC Okinawa?

Do i want to spend 20mins reading this or do i want those 20mins of my life back to do something more fulfilling

[Cold Summer]

Hmm, I guess you could say I "follow" people in the sense that I like this guy's outfits or that guy's pictures of cars on Instagram, or subscribe to YouTube creators whose videos I enjoy. But "follow" seems to connote this weird personal investment in the lives of people who make stuff, which I rarely if ever care about. This seems to have more in common with more traditional celebrity gossip, where you once had to buy a trashy magazine in the checkout at the grocery store or turn on Entertainment Tonight or whatever on TV. Somehow, this silly celebrity drama has been democratized and foisted on us all through social media, and it's really tiresome.

Quote

like we see in the denimworld but it isn't just one extra magazine to read, it's the opinions of millions all vying for your clicks so the quality has diluted to almost neutral.

Are $15 jeans from Wallmart better than SC Okinawa?

Do i want to spend 20mins reading this or do i want those 20mins of my life back to do something more fulfilling

Yep. The "algorithms" foist huge quantities of junk content on us, which it determines to be relevant to our interests, and filtering it out from actual, high-quality content that might have once been curated in a magazine can make pursuing your hobbies on a platform feel more like work than fun.

Quote

I like denim so I’m a member of a denim forum.. I like bikes so I’m a member of a bike forum, are these other folks just doing a better job of it?

I think it's a generation gap thing. Those of us born in the 80s or younger tend to like forums better because that was the standard online community context prior to the rise of corporatized social media. But for younger generations who came of age in the mid 2000s or later, after social media really took off and independent forums either died off or ended up in the internet ghetto, big social media platforms are all they've ever known.

As someone who's become more interested in cars in recent years, it seems that the best up-to-date knowledge sources tend to be Facebook groups, a couple of active forums (like Toyotanation), and trudging through mostly dead forums for tidbits of relevant knowledge.

[Duke Mantee]

This all depends on how hard you want to work for your money. Social media allows people to gain vast tracts of information in mere seconds … of course in those fleeting moments they’ve gained next to no actual knowledge, but who cares about that?

I like the forums because I get the feeling there’s a little bit more effort from contributors … mostly.

[OutSider]

I prefer forums as I find it more personal. Only social media I use is what I forced to like IG as it’s one of the few ways to learn of new denim drops. 
With how obtrusive media ads are today, I use everything I can to diminish or block them leaving social media for that purpose.

 

[beautiful_FrEaK]

Finally someone who appreciate my IG account!

[Duke Mantee]

10 minutes ago, beautiful_FrEaK said:

Finally someone who appreciate my IG account!

I got one of those too telling me about the potential for massive growth - I told them I was in my 60s and sent a dicpic to show them how wrong they were 

[smoothsailor]

^

that will teach them 

[mlwdp]

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/dhl-suspends-shipments-more-800-183937197.html
 

welp

[smoothsailor]

I like the old layout better

[LoneWolfWelding]

On 4/12/2025 at 5:00 PM, shredwin_206 said:

@Cold Summer @Double 0 Soul @julian-wolf truly the best fades come from hard work and frequent washing. I wear my stuff for work as a plumbing apprentice. Kneeling, crawling, crouching, climbing you name it. And it really is cool to push some of the higher end denim to the limits. Not cost effective at all. Wrangler 13MWZ last just as long and look great faded and only cost about $30 vs Freewheelers and Warehouse that are closer to $280 haha 

I absolutely agree! I work for a gas utility and my WildAss double front denim have some awesome fades. I can’t bring myself to wear expensive denim at work tho. Sadly because of this, my favorite jeans in my “collection” take forever to get any fades at all  

[Double 0 Soul]

I never really noticed much difference between the jeans which i worn at home and the jeans which i worn at work.. In fact, I bought 2x pairs of CSF-46s, wore one pair for work and the other for home.. if you check the CSF thread, you'd be hard pressed to see which was which, the only giveaway being small spots of paint, surprisingly maybe... the pair i wore for home turned to rags long before the pair i wore for work

 

For 15yrs i would get up in the morning, pull on a pair of fancy Japanese jeans, drive to work, change into a different pair of equally fancy jeans, work in them for 10-12 hrs/day, change back into 'home' jeans and drive home, my evenings/weekends were either spent out in the woods, hiking, bike riding, wild camping and such.. always wearing fancy jeans, in all conditions, snow, horizontal rain.. no jeans have ever lasted me longer than 18mths, most were fked after a year.

 

When i first started taking this approach (i previously wore fancy jeans at home till they were semi-fked, then wore them to work) The UK had a really strong currency.. we were getting almost 2 dollars to the pound, a Euro was less than 70p, Japanese consumption tax was 5% and more importantly, the proxy services would declare a low value so a pair of fancy Japanese jeans was a cheap commodity here in the UK.. Unlike today, the value of our currency is fked and fancy jeans are very expensive.

 

I'm not saying i didn't enjoy watching my jeans wear and evolve but once i'd done it for 15yrs.. i wasn't really gaining anything from continually repeating the experience of just burning through jeans every 12mths (sometimes, i would buy them, wash them to get shrinkage out, wash again at the 6mth mark, wash again at 12mths and that was it.. they were fked) .. 

 

I started cycling to work.. that alone destroyed a pair of CSF within a few months so i stopped cycling in jeans and i stopped wearing fancy jeans to work.. i'm currently wearing a pair of £35 vintage Carharrtt carpenters for work, which albeit vintage have already lasted 4 times longer than my £300 RMC.. I've been commuting on my bike in the same pair of trackpants for 4yrs.. the CSF lasted literally months before the arse fell through.

 

I can't really say 'i'm saving money' because i'll only blow it on some other crap but whether i'm spending that money on.. bike bits, music, food or whatevs, i'm enjoying those things a lot more than just destroying pair after pair of expensive denimz.

Edited 4 hours ago by Double 0 Soul

[ATWM]

There’s all this, above, but also I think so many beautiful vintage pairs really were before a time before commercial washers (and especially dryers) were available. I’ve been known to dry my jeans sometimes but in the end it’s pretty reliable that I find jeans look better when the denim is almost or always hang dried and not electrically cooked, regardless of the workload they’re put under. Just preference, but I do think there is a sweet spot that isn’t just totally beating up like one might a cheap pair. 

[Double 0 Soul]

Dryers are not at all popular here in the UK, it's almost tradition to line dry!.. we've never owned one, i don't actually know anyone who does own one.. maybe folks in large appartments with no outside space.

I've always line dried (in the winter when it never stops raining, we have 2x Sheila Maid's which we hoist up to the ceiling) I always wash outside out, simply because working with fine particles of wood dust, the dust / dirt sits within the outside surface of the jeans so when i turn them inside out.. you end up with a whiteish, slimey substance, something akin to mixing flour and water from where the wash has lifted the wood dust away from the surface of the denim but the rinse cycle can't wash it away becasue it's trapped within the cavity of the inside out leg.. after a wash.. they would need a second rinse outside out, so i just started washing outside out.

Edited 3 hours ago by Double 0 Soul

[Double 0 Soul]

43 minutes ago, ATWM said:

Just preference, but I do think there is a sweet spot that isn’t just totally beating up like one might a cheap pair. 

Yep for sure! .. i did a little WH denim jacket flick book, everyone can look at that progression and say 'that's the perfect stage for me' and rarely is that stage within 6mths of them going in the bin

I've always been a '1 pair of jeans at a time' guy, i've never rotated even between summer and winter, i start a pair and wear that pair till they fall to pieces which was usually within 12-18mths.. bin them and then start a new pair.. it's only this last year or so of changing track that i wish i still had piles of nicely worn denim instead of taking every pair through to the bitter end.

Edited 2 hours ago by Double 0 Soul