finishing school

[sybaritical]

A few days ago someone posted the link to/address of a site with information about treatment and finishing of denim. It was part of another thread and I can't find it now. Anyone know what I'm on about and point me to it? Cheers.

[sybaritical]

and of course, links to alternative sites of a similar nature would also be appreciated ....

[BumbaClot]

from Time:

What does it take to make brand-new jeans look old and lived in? A little creative destruction at a bizarre California factory

By Joel Stein/Los Angeles

Summer 2005 Style & Design

I can only imagine what the letters home to Mexico read like: "I'm sending money from my new factory job! We get the most expensive denim jeans in the world, and then we take sandpaper, oil, hammers and pumice stones and destroy them by hand. It seems Americans like their jeans to look old but don't want to wait. So they pay us to do it for them. I dream of a day when I can work my way up to shredding couture gowns for a living. Love, Pedro."

International Garment Finish in Long Beach, Calif., is one of the few factories in the world whose sole purpose is to destroy things. DKNY, Armani Exchange, Abercrombie & Fitch, Habitual, Yanuk, Tag and Taverniti all send their jeans here for what is called "denim washing." And there is some actual washing done (though it's in giant, $80,000 Italian washing machines filled with stones that pound the bejeezus out of the jeans). But there are also lasers burning away paint, tools grinding holes, brushes dipped in potassium permanganate replicating dirt stains, plastic staplers making wrinkles, 290?F ovens for baking in creases and a belt sander for fraying hems and pockets and ripping big holes in knees. It looks like a shop class taken over by David Letterman.

Beating up jeans is serious business, since it's what allows retailers to charge hundreds of dollars for a pair of denim pants. "A wash can take a jean from a junior line to a premium. Introducing a new wash can double or triple our business," says Nicole Garrett, who along with husband Michael Colovos owns Habitual, which produces jeans that sell out of Barneys and Fred Segal. "What distinguishes denim is fit and wash. That's your business."

Making a jean look convincingly vintage is so crucial that in order to discover every wrinkle and fade, Colovos has been wearing the same pair of jeans every day for eight months. Without washing them. "Surprisingly, they don't smell that bad. In a weird way, they kind of smell new," Colovos says before his wife looks at him askew. "I don't know about new," she says, "but I can sit in the same car." The Habitual men's line, whose debut is set for next spring, will try to reproduce each idiosyncratic stain and line in Colovos' skanky jeans, including the wallet impression in his front pocket.

The designers from Abercrombie & Fitch are equally committed to realism, often camping out at International Garment Finish for weeks and debating every rip. Five years ago, the factory treated 20,000 jeans a day at an average of $3.25 a jean. But with washes getting more detailed, it's down to 5,000 a day and charges an average of $7. For Taverniti jeans, the wash is so complicated that the factory charges $50 a pair for the 16-hr. process. Demand for jean decimation is growing so fast that International Garment Finish is building a second factory in Mexico.

Wash technology exploded in 1995 when designer Jerome Dahan of Seven for All Mankind invented "whiskers," those now ubiquitous little white lines running across the legs that look like a wrinkle fade. Many of the factory's 260 employees spend all day standing in front of blown-up rubber legs, slipping on jeans and rubbing in whiskers with sandpaper. Recently David Johnson, an artist among washers and the top R&D guy at International Garment Finish, created what he calls "vintage whiskers," which are curved and, he believes, give a more realistic, three-dimensional look. All this makes about as much sense to me as having an entire factory to break in your baseball cap for you. "We do that too," says Johnson, who frayed hats for the collection J. Lo showed at her fashion show.

It was about then that I looked down at Johnson's impressively worn jeans and asked him where he buys his.

"My wife works at Costco," he says, "so I get those."

[triniboy27]

HTF can someone 'invent' whiskers?

I know they probably meant to say 'popularise' or 'introduce' but this is TIME magazine...

[Paul T]

Sadly shallow piece. Just a couple of phone calls would have revealed that most people in the denim industry agree that Adriano Goldschmied , in conjunction with Martelli, pioneered whiskers way before Seven. For instance, Diesel had them circa 1991.

[blindlemonjefferson]

I know he doesn't run it any more, but Adriano Goldschmeid jeans have some of the nicest cuts I have ever seen. Their market is a bit boy-band, but their hero cut is the most flattering and subtle I've ever tried on.

[Salem]

man, IGF.....those koreans......damn................