A new look. Dry cleaning your raw indigo jeans.

[Vintagefan]

Has anyone on superfuture tried breaking in their jeans for at least 6 months, then have them dry cleaned? I think the result is really, really good. The jeans keep a quite dark colour, but get a more matte, grayish finish. Wear is still visible in different shades (but it is more subtle than when washing in water), and it gives the jeans a very nice lustre.

The only pictures i could find are from another thread. The following picture is of Acne Max Dry Clean jeans, which have been factory made with the same method. The picture is not entirely representative of the outcome, expect to get even better results when doing this with your own raw jeans, since you will get much better wear marks:

I think more people at superfuture should try this out, because the result is very different and unique. It would be great to see pictures of dry cleaned jeans in this thread. If anybody here has any tips about this method, or any pictures of dry cleaned jeans, please post them!

[cheep]

youre about 3 years late on this one.

[corbu]

its good to wash your jeans

[coleslawyum]

Bad to dry clean jeans. Breaks down the structure of the cotton. After a few dry washes, your jeans become porridge.

[grandnash84]

i always dry clean, never wash em

[gimmegimme]

I had a pair of Helmut Lang jeans that were raw back in the late 90's/early 00's, and I only ever drycleaned them...nothing exciting happened and I threw them away eventually...I wish I had washed them.

[tangerine]

Bad to dry clean jeans. Breaks down the structure of the cotton. After a few dry washes, your jeans become porridge.

porridge, haha.

I don't like drycleaning jeans. If there is a leather patch it dries it out and removes the ink, and more importantly, if the jeans stretch, drycleaning does not shrink them back to proper size.

Also, I think they feel better after being washed in soap and water.

[tweeds]

i drycleaned my old pair of APCs once, and i'm not sure there was any significant colour improvement over washing with water. thank goodness they don't come with leather patches.

[wingnutsglory]

Bad to dry clean jeans. Breaks down the structure of the cotton. After a few dry washes, your jeans become porridge.

Heard that too. Recommendation for wool suits is dry cleaning no more than once/year if possible, and if it breaks down wool that easily, I would think that the effect on a less durable fiber like cotton would be worse.

[jiomitori]

Heard that too. Recommendation for wool suits is dry cleaning no more than once/year if possible, and if it breaks down wool that easily, I would think that the effect on a less durable fiber like cotton would be worse.

Dry cleaning damages the environment.

Dry cleaning damages your skin.

Wash your clothes with water.

[selaviso]

this guy feels bad about posting his first thread haha.

[Fabulaz]

... I think the result is really, really good. The jeans keep a quite dark colour, but get a more matte, grayish finish. Wear is still visible in different shades (but it is more subtle than when washing in water), and it gives the jeans a very nice lustre.

Huh ?

[Chicken]

vintagefan, welcome to the future.

[BumbaClot]

i think vintage fan brought up a good point that dry cleaning does bring out the wear in a subtle way.

I dry cleaned a pair of worn raws and when they came back i thought they had been water-washed because they looked so different, certainly not the result i was expecting.

Also, they only smelled fresh for a few days and went right back to stinkin.

[sybaritical]

I've dry cleaned my LVC Twice each. It makes for a weird sandwich ... Three years on, they haven''t aged at all and it's beyond annoying. I'm beyond bored with them so I don't wear them enough to get the results I wanted or that they still promise now, but when they do need their next clean I'm gonna blitz them with the hardest detergents known to man and see what happens.

One things for sure, I'll never dry clean jeans again.

[mr fluffernutter]

so dry cleaned denim has a different flavour?

[cabl3]

Dry cleaning is actually supposed to give a greycasted look to jeans....but I mean...you can't go wrong with washing.

Enough with the obsessing of being too careful with your jeans. Just wash them and they will be fine.

[rome1]

I never really liked the results that came from dry cleaning, so I just wash, wash, wash, everything.

[drofhiphopology]

hot soak for the win.

[Paul T]

Dry cleaning works fine if your jeans are a bit grubby four months in, you want them clean, but you want to delay your first conventional wash till you have more wear. On the Lee Sanforized jeans in partiuclar, I liked the crispness of them new, dry cleaning kept that. Then afterwards I would wash them conventionally. It did dry out the leather patch, but had no other longterm effects. I'm not sure I'd do it again, because it is hardly crucial considering the toxic chemicals it releases, but the jeans I did it with look pretty good.

(don't want to post the photo again, but it would be the two pairs on the right of my photos, a little way down this threadL http://www.superfuture.com/supertalk/showthread.php?t=26394 )