indigofan

indigofan

Sunday, 18 November 2007

Delaying the wash experiment

Tailors of fine wool suits recommend that you avoid dry cleaning, and instead brush the suit regularly. Dry cleaning chemicals damage the fabric, so should only be used when absolutely necessary (less than once in six months).


So, I was thinking about my denim.

After about 6 months they start to turn pretty ugly. They gather piles of shitty dust and stuff in the fabric. Heres a pic of what gathers after just a week.


This stuff gathers all around the belt loops and inside legs. It's all dust, hair, sizing, indigo, skin cells... pretty gross, and every time you take your jeans off, you generate a halo of this shit floating around the room.

I regularly shake my jeans outside to remove this stuff, but it doesn't effectively remove it... so I decided to get a suit brush and try treating my denim like a fine wool suit.



Well it works great. The bristles aren't too hard - so I don't think it removes that much indigo. Anyway, it is much less indigo loss than a wash would remove.

Try it on your denim instead of washing. Brush them inside out, and then brush the outside. I even brushed the dusty shit out of my pockets. The jeans come out of it renewed and refreshed.

Let me know if you have success or if you think it's a dumb idea.

Labels:

3 Comments:

Blogger ethandesu said...

Matt, As a tailor I definately agree ~ I try to clean my suits no more than once a season, but I rotate them regularly and leave them out to air after every wear. Funnily enough though, when I was working for Evis in Daikanyama, everybody washed their jeans and tumble dried them before they started wearing them to get the skew to the leg, and then wore them daily without any washes for months. The best way of getting weaar into our jeans was by kneeling on the floor as we hand mopped every morning. Yamane said this was for "company spirit", but I think it was just to remind us that we aere the ones who had to mop the floor by hand everyday. A boar bristle brush is the best thing for your suiting, and there are lots of vintage ones to be had on eBay..
ethandesu

Tue Nov 20, 03:15:00 pm  
Blogger robinbenito said...

I´d love an update on this experiment!

Fri Apr 18, 11:05:00 pm  
Blogger achikochi said...

How is the brush experiment going?

Wed Oct 01, 03:12:00 am  

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home