Saturday, May 24, 2008

yO! This is Ari.

yO! This is Ari.

So our mission is to not buy anything new. Great! This sounds easy enough considering that I’ve been doing this with my clothes for the past 6 months. This may sound gross to some of you, but I’ve been wearing the same pair of jeans for the past 6 months. That’s right, you read it correctly. The same jeans every singl

e day for the past 6 months. If that’s not being green, I don’t know what is.

To be honest, I didn’t originally do this to try to save the earth, but because it’s actually supposed to be fashionable to buy one premium pair of raw denim and try to wear it out. The goal is to keep on the same pair of jeans so that it’ll start fading to your lifestyle; leaving marks from your daily routine. This trend started in Japan where most of premium denim are fabricated by master artesian. As we all know from reading, “Japanese Teens as Producers of Street Fashion” by Kawamura, most of Japanese fashion is inspired

by the West. The Japanese didn’t invent denim, the just mastered it and made it better. I wanted to illustrate how fashion in Japan is, “no longer controlled or guided by professionally trained designers but by the teens who have become the producers of fashion.” But if I did so, I wouldn’t have anything to elaborate on for my next blog!


For this post, I'll give ya'll some eye candy and show you the evolution of my Jeans.

Day1: Shipped from Japan

Day 2: 1st time worn: ( my butt is on the right)


4th month:


6th month (Present day): One wash. I would like to mention it was HAND washed, saving electricity, sparing the earth.





For those who think I'm making up the notion that this is a trend, I kid you not! There is actually a subculture of denim heads out there. I have this forum to prove it:
www.superfuture.com


-Ari Simphoukham

ari239@gmail.com

www.studio239.blogspot.com

6 comments:

kieulinh said...

i so want to do this now. i'll start this summer. but i'll have to get used premium denim. not hard at all. did you know that crossroads in santa monica has the latest premium denim for $20-50/pair. they are supposedly "used" but actually many are brand new. LA has a large clothing industry were denim trends come and go weekly. many of these companies give out jeans like crazy to folks. these lucky bastards cannot possibly wear them all so they sell them to places like crossroad to make some extra dough. it's denim mecca, my friend, at 75% off.

Tina said...

I've been doing this as well. In general I don't wash my jeans for months and when I do, I dry clean instead

Studio 239 Photography said...

tina,

Dry cleaning your jeans will ruin your fades. I don't recommend it.


Valverde,

I recommend getting raw selveged Japanese denim. There's a difference between those denim you find in retail stores from the one's from Japan. For example, these Jeans are hand made. They use a different way to put the jeans together called "selvedge". (google it). This method of creating the jeans is very difficult to do and requires highly skilled people to get it done correctly. The material used to make these japanese denim are also suppose to be the best organic material and dye.
You can find these japanese denim in only one place in the U.S. There's a small boutique in San Francisco where all they sell are high end premium denim. However, after reading about how some business women are using the marketing technique of selling their items in a small boutique store to increase the perceived value, I'm lead to believe that perhaps this store is doing the same thing?

You can find the store on this website: www.selfedge.com

-ari

kieulinh said...

Ari, I've been reading the blogs you recommended and it seems to me when the time comes, I really have to get a good sense of which pair, fit and price works best for me. I don't think I can find these used and anyway, it beats the purpose of documenting the history from beginning to end, right? I'll be in touch to keep informed on which brand and where to purchase. But, according to the rules if I don't get it used I can only get it as a gift, so I'll be lobbying for it for my bday pressie. Prof. V

Cheryl said...

nice butt ari!

Studio 239 Photography said...

hahaha, thanks cheryl.