The Single Most Important Thing You Have to Do to Get Good Vintage Fades
We are now going to tell you exactly the opposite of what you have had drummed into you. To get vintage fades, you need to wash your jeans. That’s right folks, we are telling you to wash you jeans; in fact, you need to wash a lot.
Washing Your Jeans Is Good
The notion of not washing your jeans holds firm if you are looking for high contrast fades. But, it is no good if you want to achieve that vintage look.
The first thing to do (especially if the denim is unsanforized) is soak the jeans. You should get all of that shrinkage out along with all of the chemicals from the weaving process. In fact, we would go as far as following Gavin Smith’s, aka Megatron1505, method of shrinking down unsanforized jeans. Take a look here.
With a soak, machine wash, and a tumble dry, many die-hard denimheads (and novices) will say you have ruined the fading potential of the jeans. We thing that is nonsense. You have just put them on a different path.
Wear Them Hard and Wash Them Often
Now, start wearing them as much as possible. Treat them bad; pretend you are a cowboy or gold miner. Then every two weeks to a month, turn them inside out and throw them in the washing machine. Don’t think about it much more than this.
The hard wearing and the washing will give you the vintage fades.
The wearing will set in the creases and wear patterns and start to rub off the heavily ingrained indigo from the fibres, setting up your fade pattern. Your choice of the denim and fit will ensure that these are not overly contrasting.
The regular washing will allow the indigo to bleed out, almost re-dying the fibres that lost some colour. The washing will also remove an even (if minimal) layer of indigo promoting the much more subtle look of vintage fades. The regular washing will also soften up the fabric and this also helps you get more homogeneous wear patterns.
The Process is Remarkably Simple: Wear. Wash. Repeat
It is fascinating that we have come full circle. From repros of vintage jeans, to the pursuit of the ultimate contrast in fades back to a pursuit of the subtle beauty of the vintage fade. We look forward to seeing many more examples of this popping up in the future.
Do you have the perfect vintage fade? Send us an email to [email protected] with a few pictures of it and fill out this questionnaire about the jeans.
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