Unwashed jeans still look new after several weeks- advice?

Hi,

Apologies if this has been discussed already but a search yielded nothing.

I've been wearing my 5EPxSFs at least 3-4 times a week since I got them a couple of months ago, but I swear they look just as nice & dark & new as when I first put them on. I hoped I would see the beginning of some nice fades by now. Am I doing something wrong? Some of my theories are:

-Its too soon and I should keep at it
-They need to be tighter in order to rub properly to create fades
-I need to do more in them like play football or climb rocks
-I need to wash or soak them (contrary to prevailing wisdom) in order for the fades to become visible
-I could wipe my hands on them when they are dirty in order to create some kind of action
-I need to get a life

Advice and thoughts are appreciated.

D) All of the above

Originally Posted by warlok1965

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Hi,

Apologies if this has been discussed already but a search yielded nothing.

I've been wearing my 5EPxSFs at least 3-4 times a week since I got them a couple of months ago, but I swear they look just as nice & dark & new as when I first put them on. I hoped I would see the beginning of some nice fades by now. Am I doing something wrong? Some of my theories are:

-Its too soon and I should keep at it
-They need to be tighter in order to rub properly to create fades
-I need to do more in them like play football or climb rocks
-I need to wash or soak them (contrary to prevailing wisdom) in order for the fades to become visible
-I could wipe my hands on them when they are dirty in order to create some kind of action
-I need to get a life

Advice and thoughts are appreciated.

I think your first point is the main one. I would not wash or soak them prematurely to try to accelerate the process. The whole idea is to let creases and wear set deeply before washing them -- you should be able to see the fades starting just from wear. If you wash them to soon, you're going to get relatively uniform fading, when what you're really looking for is differential fading.

Maybe... u should not bother about what happens to them, and how you wear them...


Its raw jeans... Just wear them as per normal and I am sure the fades would turn up as usual... it takes about 1 mth to break into them anyway.

And about another 2 months or so to start seeing creases form permanently...

Let's just be generous and say you've worn them 4 times a week for a month. That's only 16 wears. You don't really even see indications of fading until 50 wears, and that's IF you wear them all day (ie you wear them from the time you get up until the time you go to bed.

Breaking in jeans actually takes time and work. If you want to break in jeans fast, wear them every day at every time you can except when you sleep. Wear them to work if you can, wear them hiking, wear them anywhere you can that you normally wouldn't wear jeans.

I don't know where people get the idea that after a month, they'll have vintage looking fades.

You're not wearing them hard enough. You need to live in your jeans as if it's your second skin.

I'm a newbie with denim myself, so this is interesting to me because from the responses it now looks like I may have had the wrong assumption about how this worked.

I had the impression that with raw jeans, no matter how much you wore them, the whiskers and fade and so forth wouldn't appear until after the first wash. In other words, the more wear they got, the more interesting stuff would magically appear after that first wash, but not until.

Am I off track?

David

You will start to see whiskers at your knee and lap after about 3 months in on 5eps. You'll only be able to see them in certain light at certain angles etc., but you'll be able to see them.

After you wash, whenever you decide to, the contrast will be kicked up a notch.

just wear your jeans and don't worry about it.

Thanks everyone. Clearly I haven't worn them enough (~30 times) to see much happening. I wasn't expecting them to look vintage or worn at all, just more curious to see when the whiskers etc. would start to become visible.

The thing to remember is that this is the beauty of indigo, that every pair of raw jeans will be unique to the individual and will reflect YOUR life and no-one elses. Live in them just DO NOT CARE for them and eventually you will have a truly great and very personal garment.

dude you seriously have to sleep in them to get wicked fades.. thats the secret bro if you sleep in um you get mad fades in like a couple days....

Originally Posted by Mbogo

Click to expand...

I'm a newbie with denim myself, so this is interesting to me because from the responses it now looks like I may have had the wrong assumption about how this worked.

I had the impression that with raw jeans, no matter how much you wore them, the whiskers and fade and so forth wouldn't appear until after the first wash. In other words, the more wear they got, the more interesting stuff would magically appear after that first wash, but not until.

Am I off track?

Yeah, you're off track. Think of it this way: all washing does to raw denim is remove some of the indigo. The entire pair of jeans will fade a bit (how much depends on the indigo used and how deeply-dyed the jeans were). They'll fade *more* at the points where the indigo has been particularly "loosened" from the fabric, so to speak--so at the stress points (the thighs, the seat, and any deeply-set creases). But if you can't see VISIBLE FADING already in those areas, a wash won't do all that much to them. Washing your jeans won't magically transform them, it will just accelerate the fading that's already started.

This might help some... one guy's first wash with raw denim Imperial Dukes:

First, stop worrying about them. Raw denim is like boiling water: if you sit there watching it, it will never boil ;-) Just live in them without worrying about them, and they'll do the work.

Second, stop thinking about everything in terms of time. Denim doesn't wear with time as a constant; it all depends on how hard you wear them and the types of things you do in them. One person may wear their jeans as much in a day as another person may wear their jeans in an entire month.