Ryan Szabo and his team spend hours poring over photos of well-worn jeans, some of them faded, torn, or patched.
The best in the community get praise: “The crotch patch is amazing!”, or “Subtle, even tones…a near perfect balance of wear patterns with stunning blue tones.” The latter is the winner.
That’s how it’s judged at the Indigo Invitational competition, where people from all over the world wear their jeans under certain rules for an entire year.
To get the best jeans in the world in this peculiar contest there is a fundamental strategy: “low-wash denim”.
Since denim becomes softer with soap and water, one of the keys to achieving high-contrast patterns is to not wash the pants.
Everyone follows this strategy, from members of an anti-laundry people’s club to the CEO of Levi’s.
The low-wash culture
For Szabo, the “low-wash” habit began with the purchase of his first pair of jeans in 2010.
She wore them for 6 months without washing them, on a trip to Europe from her native Canada to Europe.
“It was weird for me to have those stinky jeans,” he tells BBC Culture. “They smelled horrible.”
In Budapest he met his future wife and the jeans took on their own role in the relationship. “They were stacked on the floor at the foot of the bed,” he recalls.
“You would walk into the room and you could smell them. Luckily my wife was very much in love with me.”
Among the Indigo Invitational competitors, whose fifth year now begins, more than 9 in 10 delay first washing their pants until they’ve worn them 150 to 200 times, Szabo estimates.
Instead of resorting to the washing machine, those who wear unwashed denim learn other ways to care for their garments, such as exposing them to UV rays (“I call it sunbathing,” says Szabo) or simply airing them out at night.
Szabo himself also admits to sometimes using the washing machine: “As soon as my wife can smell my jeans, she tells me and they immediately go to wash.”
People who wear jeans aren’t the only ones who limit their laundry.
In 2019, designer Stella McCartney made headlines by detailing her low-wash habits, telling The Guardian: “The general rule of thumb in life is if you don’t have to clean anything at all, don’t clean.”
“I wouldn’t change my bra every day and I don’t throw things in the washing machine just because I’ve worn them. I’m very hygienic, but I’m not a fan of dry cleaning or any cleaning for that matter.”
One hundred days of use without washing
Others rethink their laundry habits out of consideration for the environment or because of the increase in their electricity bill.
Mac Bishop, founder of clothing company Wool & Prince, explains that he shifted his focus to “comfort and minimalism” – which resonated well with male consumers and particularly those who hated doing laundry – when he began promoting his women’s brand. Wool&.
Subjected to centuries of sexist advertising for laundry products, women would be less responsive to the idea of not doing laundry, she theorized.
And the research backed that up by showing that, for them, environmentalism was a more effective motivator.
The Wool& brand today sells merino wool dresses with the promotion of the “challenge” of wearing the same wool every day for 100 days.
One payoff from this challenge is “the reduction in laundry that comes with wearing merino on a daily basis,” according to Rebecca Eby of Wool&.
The American Chelsea Harry, a client of the brand, assures BBC Culture that she grew up “in a house where everything was washed after use”, even towels and pajamas.
One summer Harry lived with his grandmother, who taught him to put his pajamas under his pillow in the morning and wear them again at night. He later met her husband, who “almost never does laundry.” And then during the pandemic, he started hiking. That’s when things really changed.
“Obviously, you can’t shower after walking all day if you’re sleeping in a hammock or in a tent,” he says.
In the hiking community some people recommended woolen underwear from a particular brand, which can be worn the following days or washed and dried quickly.
Wearing this and other woolen clothing, Harry found that he could hike for days and still feel comfortable.
“So I started thinking: Why don’t I do this in my daily life?” she recalls. And so he did.
The smell
She doesn’t care about the smell. “I trust my nose,” she asserts.
In a new dress made from a different wool blend she can smell herself, something that never happens with her other clothes, she explains, even when traveling to hot places like the Middle East.
Like Szabo, use tricks to avoid a full wash, like airing the garment overnight or spraying vinegar or vodka underarms.
“I love, at the end of the day, hanging up my wool dress, my wool leggings, my wool socks,” she confesses. “I hang them by the window, take a shower, put my underwear away, and in the morning I put it all back on.”
“One of the worst things you can do to a garment, if you want it to last, is wash it.” So says Mark Sumner, professor of sustainable fashion at the University of Leeds.
washing machines and sustainability
With one wash, he says, clothes can tear, shrink, and lose color. Together with his partner Mark Taylor, Sumner studies how microfibers from household clothes end up in the sea.
Although he argues that washing clothes less frequently is the right choice for the environment, he does not advocate a complete suspension of washing machines.
“We don’t want people to think they can’t wash things because they’re destroying the planet. It’s about trying to get the balance right,” Sumner told BBC Culture.
Washing clothes is important for hygienic and medical reasons for eczema sufferers trying to avoid irritation caused when our skin’s natural bacteria multiply inside our clothes.
It is also important for people’s self-esteem “not to feel ashamed of their clothes because they are dirty or smelly”.
Regarding washing habits, he does not recommend a specific one. Ordinary citizens use different wash temperatures, wash cycles, and color and fabric combinations, and scientists themselves are no different.
“I’ve been working with textiles for 30 years and I should know to separate cottons from synthetics and whites from colours, but frankly I don’t have the time.”
The best approach, apparently, is to be flexible. “If your clothes don’t smell bad, don’t bother washing them,” advises Sumner.
“And when you go to wash it, be clear about what to do so that the garment is clean, but in the most effective way.”
He suggests washing clothes at lower temperatures or with very short cycles without detergent.
Also, doing laundry too often eats up hours of life, and not everyone has the time to spare.
“I’m very interested in sustainability, the environment and natural resource management, but I’m also concerned about my time,” says Chelsea Harry.
Szabo also worries about sustainability, but says she has other reasons for giving up overzealous cleaning habits.
“I have other things to do,” he says. I have a dog to walk.
*Article adapted from the original by Matilda Welin for BBC Culture
Keep reading:
* The chemical reason why the original jeans were blue (and why they are called jeans or denim)
* How to make your washer and dryer last
* The garment that generates the most pollution in the world
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See original article on BBC