Colored Denim Report
Reject the false "Jeans Binary"
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Jeans: What other (western?) garment reads as so thoroughly quotidian yet so powerfully talismanic? Millions of people with zero avowed interest in clothes rock jeans because they seem like the closest thing to a non-signifying non-choice you can make when yr getting dressed. And yet the Wise Clothes Considerer knows that — because jeans are worn so widely, across so many cultural and subcultural lines, in such an abundance of washes, fibers and fits — denim is a verbose “jawn text.” This is true whether you’re a sauce-blind jeans-rocker who opts for what you think are the most boilerplate examples (in an attempt to read as neutral), or you’re a Selvedge Talmudist deeply versed in the finer points of warp, weft, whiskers, stacking and honeycombing (in an attempt to impress ~1,136 other guys on a message board).
For the past few years, relaxed-fit jeans in stonewashed blues (and, less often, but no less dopely, faded blacks) have been the wave, jeanswise, among the Mach 3+. They are regarded as the chiller, less-try-hard half of a Denim Binary the other half of which is stiff dark-indigo raw denim: a style heavily in vogue a decade ago, and which still commands a global sleeper-cell network of obsessives who’ve been sitting on stockpiles of that 19oz HIGH-TWIST SLUB YARN OKAYAMA HEAT (not to mention that GOOD JUNIPER BEARD OIL), waiting for their moment to strike!!
Since trend cycles seem to spin faster & faster all the time, and since a binary only offers you two places to go, whispers of an imminent “raw-denim renaissance” have been mounting lately…
But aren’t there other paths?? Can’t we go “between the horns” of this jeans dilemma??
O! You know we can. Because today’s Spyplane is about how colored denim — i.e., denim that isn’t indigo blue, black, or white — is looking good as h*ll right now. We rounded up a ton of slappers, new and vintage, and not just jeans, but also very fire jackets, vests, button-ups, even jorts. Spy Nation, we found bangers aplenty.
When we talk about colored denim, we’re talking about a fairly (but not exclusively) ‘90s-coded jawn — especially when it comes to the contrast-stitch joints. But the pieces Erin and I are feeling right now nod to that decade subtly, glancingly, if they nod at all, and without getting mired in retro nostalgia.
FOR STARTERS, PEEP THESE MUTED BEAUTIES IN OUR TOP 2 CURRENT COLORS —
