Nudie Lab Selvage

As with footwear and coats, we spend in-appropriate amounts of time and energy (but definitely not energie) poring over various brands and styles of Denim here at Proper, it’s become increasingly more and more important to us over the years. Though I’ve been relatively passionate about jeans since the whole 501 heard-it-through-the-grapevine thing in the 80s, the first brand to turn my head in recent years and create a serious leaning towards denim geekery has been Nudie, whose orange-threaded denim I’ve been wearing pretty much since the label arrived on the scene back in the early noughties, looking like Gothenburg’s answer to the Wild Ones or Vikings in turn-ups. In fact it was Nudie’s fault for first turning my legs into walking bio-hazards by insisting that I didn’t wash them for at least 90 wears, which resulted in a look so good I realised that maybe these dirty Swedish nutters/bastards were onto something after all.

Fast forward several years/pairs of Average Joes later to August 2010 and I’m opening a lovely canvas bag that has been sent to me all the way from Sweden that contains the most exclusive jeans I have ever owned. The pair in question ‘Lab Tim’ have been created using Japanese selvage, treated and washed by hand in a little laboratory in Italy, the rivets, trims and buttons are all made of pure silver, the leather label has a ‘burnt on’ branded stamp and I’m reliably informed that the overall look is inspired by World War II garments, just in case you need to know stuff like that. Now I know a lot of purists out there may recoil when they hear talk of ‘treatments’ and messing around in labs but clearly they haven’t got a pair of these babies wrapped round their legs. I’m not the biggest fan of distressing or messing around with jeans either though that does seem to be the direction denim is headed at the moment and Nudie have re-assured me that in the right hands it can be done really, really well. What this clever treatment has effectivley done is given me a great looking pair of ever-so-slightly worn in jeans without the months of avoiding the wash basket or nearly breaking my neck whilst getting out of the bath in a wet pair of raw jeans. Oh and it’s also made me even more obsessive about denim, nice one Nudie.

www.nudiejeans.com