It’s All in the Jeans

When I was a kid there were two new articles of clothing that every kid I knew hated; the first was new white sneakers and the second were new pairs of jeans.  I can remember begging my mother to buy my new “school” tennis shoes a month before school started so that I could have time to get them appropriately dirty and “Not new looking.”  This concept that white, white, white sneakers were passé was something neither of my parents understood.  But new jeans were a problem for everyone.

Jeans were invented in the 1800’s for miners and railroad workers and people who needed clothes that could take a beating and not rip apart.  They stayed that way for about a hundred years.  A new pair of jeans in the sixties and early seventies was more like a weapon than an item of clothing.  They were stiff, and dark and were more like cardboard than cloth.

It took many washings and wearings to get them to perfection that is if you picked the right size to begin with.  Knowing your right jean size was a real crapshoot since they were fabricated out of unwashed denim, which would shrink between 5-10%.  Learning to judge what 7.5% shrinkage might be was a real art.

For maximum shrinkage you would use hot water and then put the jeans in the dryer until the machine practically was on fire.  The only problem is that usually you would shrink them a direction you were not looking for, like if the waist were too big you would shrink the length so you would end up with floods.  Once shrunken, you could only stretch them back out so far, and making them longer almost never worked.  Really talented new jean owners would start washing their jeans in cold water and gently drying them before trying them on to see if they had achieved the desired amount of shrinkage.  Subsequent washings would get warmer and warmer until nirvana was reached.

The other issue with new jeans was the actual amount of indigo dye still in that sturdy fabric.  You had to wash the jeans alone for the first few cycles or suffer blue underwear and socks.  That dye was powerful.  It may not have all stayed in the jeans, but once it migrated to my father’s underpants it was there to stay.

I am thankful that jeans makers finally figured out to prewash the fabric before making the jeans so that all that shrinking and dye removal was done already.  Not only does it help us to pick the correct size out, but also we can wear our new jeans out in public the day we buy them without the fear of ridicule.

It is harder to shrink your jeans, which while I am still losing weight I would like to be able to do.  I find that I need a new pair about every 12 pounds.  If I had jeans of the sixties I would barely get a pair presentable and soft enough for wearing before I would need to start on a new pair.  I don’t have time to develop a relationship with a favorite pair since jeans are coming and going on my but these days.  I am looking forward to that long-term commitment to a final pair of jeans soon.