Denim
Clothes Line Saga 006
Welcome back to Clothes Line Saga, a series devoted to fit pics and associated commentary.
I wore this on Friday, February 13th.
Every Friday afternoon, my wife and I take a long walk with our dog through one of the many beautiful parks we’re blessed with here in San Francisco. Usually we go to McLaren Park, a rambling wilderness just up the hill from our home in the Excelsior district, but this day we rolled over to Bernal for a trek up and down its namesake Heights. We hadn’t been in a while, not since a run-in with the local coyote pack last year (everything turned out fine, despite our dog’s best efforts).
I’m glad we went back. As long as we keep the dog on-leash near the coyote den, there’s nothing to worry about. And the views are extraordinary:
Anyway, I wore jeans for our walk. What else would I do?
Denim is a noble fabric. Honest, hardworking, forthright—what we all aspire to be, or ought to. Through frays, fades, and rips, it attests to the lives we lead while wearing it. Nearly every piece of clothing looks better with some mileage on it, but this is especially true of denim. See the market for pre-distressed pieces, with a false sense of history baked right in.
Many of the most important garments of my life have been made of denim. The Krew-brand skinny jeans I adopted in ~2005, way ahead of the curve; the Levi’s Type III with the embroidered GIRLS patch sewn on the back; the American Apparel shirts I lived in between the years 2011 and 2014—all gone, never forgotten. Some sense of my identify is wrapped up the indigo weft. Utilitarian, plainspoken, hardy. Californian, above all else. Denim is the fabric of my people.
It’s also something I’ve been wearing less of recently, at least when it comes to pants. As I’ve documented, I’ve invested serious time and energy (not to mention money) in my wardrobe over the last several years—turns out I was “looksmaxxing” before such a term even existed.
Part of this process has been adopting a more intentional approach to dressing. I don’t want to just have clothes on, I want to wear them. In general, this project has been an overwhelming success: I’m considerably (and consistently) more satisfied with the way I look and, by extension, the statements I make. It has, however, had a few unintended consequences. Chief among them: the desertion of denim.
For years, jeans were simply my default state. If I was going out of my house, I was doing so in denim pants. Today, I almost always find myself opting for alternatives—not because I don’t dig jeans, but because they symbolize another era of my life, and another iteration of myself, which I’m attempting to move beyond. Dressing intentionally, in other words, has become synonymous with “not wearing jeans.” But it doesn’t have to be that way. I can have my cake and eat it, too.
I’m calling it now: 2026 is the year of jeans. For me, anyways.
It helps that I have a handsome new pair in my wardrobe. These are the orSlow Super Dads. Made in Japan, 100% cotton, heavyweight 13.5oz denim—quality through and through. It’s the fit that really makes them, though: high rise, wide, and straight as an arrow. No distressing, no elastane, no taper, none of that bullshit. Just put them on and walk out the door. Easy as that.
I’ve been a Levi’s man for years—what’s a pair of jeans without the red tab and those iconic back pockets? But I’m feeling good about the switch. Levi’s tend to be cut narrow in the thighs, which is a bad fit for me and my tree trunk legs. Quality can be hit-or-miss, too. I still wouldn’t call Levi’s a fast-fashion brand, but the brutal pressures of the fashion industry and international supply chains have them headed in that direction. I could always go down the vintage denim rabbit hole and start sourcing legit MiUSA specimens, but that seems to be self-defeating. The beauty of jeans is that you don’t really need to think about them. Why turn them into a fetish object (and an expensive one at that)?
One of the best things about denim is its flexibility. Walking the dog, running errands, going out to dinner, hitting a show—I can do it all in jeans. And I have been.
I wore this, for instance, on February 4th, for an evening meeting of my men-only book club (we’re reading Moby-Dick).
This is basically just jeans and a denim shirt (I’m a sucker for denim-on-denim), but the jacket and the Wallabees tighten things up a bit. The dark wash of the Super Dads helps, too. I typically prefer a nice stonewash, but darker denim works in a greater variety of contexts.
I wore this, on the other hand, on February 14th, to hit the farmer’s market (salute to the great Alemany Farmer’s Market, the first in the state of California) while having some work done on my car.
I’m wearing an undershirt I slept in, a workshirt I grabbed off a chair, and Calzuros. This is about one step away from going out in pajamas, but the jeans save it. I’m sure another pair of pants could’ve worked, but I would’ve had to think about which, and why, and whether a different shirt might not have been a better choice, and on and on. That was something I just didn’t want to deal with (especially not on Valentine’s Day).
Call it intentionally unintentional. That’s denim.