Fashion Design major here, with a key focus on materials science... Stretchy materials are inherently weaker, and their integration with any other non-stretchy material will diminish the lifespan of the garment made from that textile. Especially at the seams. Elastics are broken down by UV (sunlight), hot water, detergents, fabric softeners, dryer sheets, intense heat (dryers), and use. So if you wear stretchy jeans outdoors on a regular basis, and wash them in a washing machine regularly, they won't last long. But people wash their jeans FAR too often. Once a year, or so, is all they actually need. No, seriously. The founder of the Tobacco Motorwear company just posted a video to his Instagram last week, where he talks about how actual selvedge jeans are made, cared for, etc. The pair he is wearing in the video he's had for 10 years, and has washed 3 times. Our knee-jerk reaction (carefully cultivated by the personal care products industry) is Disgusting! But, in reality, it isn't. We wash EVERYTHING - clothes, hair, faces - far too often for our good, and 99% of those resources are wasted... the material, the clothing item, the detergents, the water, processing the detergents back OUT of the water at the wastewater treatment plant, etc. So yeah... stretchy jeans won't last long. But they'll last longer if you don't fall victim to the manufactured myths promoted by people who want to sell you cleaning products and appliances.
When I was twelve I wore one pair of jeans for about 2/3rds of the school year. They were pretty vile by the time I took them off, and they smelled horrible, but I was twelve. When I washed them they disintegrated. RIP stinky-ass 501s. I have a few pairs of Eddie Bauer jeans that have been around since 2004 or so. They get washed every week. More than that, one particular pair was in not one, but two layovers and are doing fine. I'm not sure who these magical people are that can wear a pair of jeans for a year and not have them smell like bait? But I'm definitely not one of them and neither is my wife, who is an android devoid of sweat and scent glands. Unless you're wearing long underwear your jeans are the direct repository of half the skin cells your body sloughs off every day. And I mean, just walking around wearing a mixer all day is enough for me to sweat out a pair of jeans. I wash my clothes when they stink, which is one wearing or 4-5 for jeans. I wash my hair when it feels gross and smells bad, which is every other day. I wash my face once or twice a day which is the carefully-calculated minimum to keep myself from breaking out (at 44). When I'm in LA that becomes 2-3 times a day because of all the schmutz. I know there's this vast movement to let it mellow but I, for one, am fucking vile if I don't keep clean. I suspect I'm not alone.Once a year, or so, is all they actually need. No, seriously.
We wash EVERYTHING - clothes, hair, faces - far too often for our good, and 99% of those resources are wasted... the material, the clothing item, the detergents, the water, processing the detergents back OUT of the water at the wastewater treatment plant, etc.
Well, obviously, once things stink you wash them. Or hang them outside to air out. The sales of moisturizer and conditioner would plummet and whole countries would fail tomorrow, if people actually took care of their skin and hair properly. Stripping away the body's natural functions and replacing them with chemical ones is not a route to happiness or success. But helping your stinky self out a bit with a few carefully selected products is always a wise choice.
NASA actually tested this. How funky do you get if you don't bathe or change your clothes? What they discovered is that we hit "peak funk" at about four weeks after which point we don't get any funkier (they actually weighed clothes - which quit gaining "funk" weight after four weeks). The problem is, "peak funk" is "haven't bathed or changed clothes in a month" and that's one of two steady states, the other being "squeaky clean out of the shower." We used to feel about lice and ringworm about what we feel about dandruff now - awkward, something to be avoided, but not the end of the world. Attitudes change and as our cleanliness has gone up, so has public health... and "the body's natural functions" are a whole lot more offensive than they used to be. Maybe it'll swing the other way. For work I watched some dudes under 30 and some dudes over 30 interact about body hair in about 2012. The dudes under 30 were smooth-shaven everywhere, from toes to nose. The dudes over 30 were aghast. the dudes under 30 were all "yeah, this is our life now, you're old" but within about four years body hair was back. But I went for a run yesterday and took a shower. Then I had a day, went to bed, woke up and went to yoga. It's now been about 26 hours since I had a shower and I'm gross.* I'm not leaving this house without a shower and a shave. 50 years ago I'd be a damn obsessive compulsive deviant for having that attitude but 50 years ago I'd be a deviant for going for a run and then to yoga so you know what? I'ma keep changing my underwear every day.
I'm firmly in the don't wash your jeans until they stand up and ask for voting rights camp. Longtime pubskivites who somehow remember the ex girlfriend I lived with might be surprised to learn that we got in an argument and she stopped talking to me briefly over wearing pants for more than one day and it wasn't even about hygiene, but a much stupider issue. I don't think your schedule is really feasible though because of visible stains. I've worn jeans for several months but a lot of times you get something on them and have to wash them. My current jeans have a permanent ink stain it seems but get some salad dressing on them and I'm definitely going to wash them instead of walking around with what looks like a cum stain on my pants
Elastics are broken down by UV (sunlight), hot water, detergents, fabric softeners, dryer sheets, intense heat (dryers), and use. So if you wear stretchy jeans outdoors on a regular basis, and wash them in a washing machine regularly, they won't last long. So it's a conspiracy by the clothing industry to get us to buy more pants. ;)Stretchy materials are inherently weaker, and their integration with any other non-stretchy material will diminish the lifespan of the garment made from that textile. Especially at the seams.
I get the tongue-in-cheek nature of your comment, but there is more interesting stuff to unpack here. Up until the 50's, people had Clothes. They wore clothing. They went out, bought things that lasted, and wore it - and repaired it or handed it down - until it no longer functioned as clothing, and was turned into rags. Think Levi's. There was everyday wear, formal wear, and high-fashion. Then one designer - can't remember who it was, but someone whose name you'd recognize, like Chanel - introduced the idea of Seasonal Lines. Now you suddenly needed FOUR TIMES the amount of clothing you had before! And remember, this is post-WWII America, where industry is booming, and factories are making shit, and the economy is going crazy, and the Suburbs are invented and Shopping Malls are invented. So now you have NEW STUFF YOU HAVE TO BUY, with your NEW MONEY, when your drive your NEW CAR, to the new - air conditioned! - SHOPPING MALL... That was Phase One of the change in clothing worldwide. Phase two began when you needed someone who bought last year's spring fashions, to shell out more money THIS year, because now you had this factory and employees and pensions and OSHA and Insurance and 40-hour workweeks, to support. And there was all this oil we made for the War Effort, and it was still coming out of the ground, so the government funded DuPont and others to invent new things to do with this oil. And stretch materials were invented. And water-repellent materials. And materials that didn't need ironing. Etc. So you had the seasonality of a garment, then you made it with less resilient materials. The final step was to cut prices so EVERYONE could afford "fashion". And you did that by moving production overseas, and reducing the resiliency of the design to cut down on costs - material cost, material use, construction time, etc. - which also reduced the lifespan of the product. So now you have bespoke jeans. Now you have niche manufacturers literally using 150-year old machinery - that still works great, thankyouverymuch - buying quality materials (selvedge denim), and using the sewing techniques used early last century that created the ruggedness of an original pair of Levi's, etc. Full circle, man.
I feel like Fast Fashion took everything you just described, put a brick on the accelerator, and pointed the car to the nearest cliff. On the subject of flexible jeans, is that I find them to feel so cheap, but I went to the fancy mall the other week to kill some time and I'm even seeing them in the "high end" stores going for a couple hundred bucks and they actually seem worse than what I've seen in places like Target or Kohls. Also, what brands do you recommend for durable, sustainable, ethical clothes? I know of a few, like Everlane and Bluer Denim, but not much other than them.
How much is he sweating in them though? I once had some slacks that I didn't wash for a decade... and then I threw them out with the rest of the clothes I never wore. I tend to wear jeans until I spill food on them, but even if it's only working in an office and some walking in air conditioned or cool places after 10 or 15 wears there is a definite "this is the smell of my skin when I sweat" smell. Not strong, not really a bad smell, definitely not swamp ass. Probably not noticable to someone next to me, but it's there. And I'm not gonna buy a dozen to wear in rotation so they can air out.The pair he is wearing in the video he's had for 10 years, and has washed 3 times.
Ha! Kind of funny. goobster we aren't hating, I mostly agree with you. And if you can go a year without peanutbuttering yourself more power to you