We Learn Something New Every Day*

We recently (this is the royal we, unless you count the taxi uncle, who got lost on the way and was kind of hilarious) took a trip out to a neighborhood in Singapore called Tanjong Katong to visit edgy Singapore store The Lawn. The adorably patient Damien took us all around the store and was cheerfully encouraging when we set our sights on an adorable tweedy winter hat with – wait for it – earflaps, and he also schooled us on the finer points of denim. (Of which, we really know nothing about because our denim philosophy is: We get our skinny jeans from the Gap and wide-legged ones from Topshop. We did try small, toe-in-the-water forays into the designer category with both Paige and Paper Denim & Cloth jeans, but those were sort of woefully disappointing, and so Gap and Topshop it is. However, if you would like to offer us some Earnest Sewns, we would not refuse.)

(Ah, rambling. Blame the coffee.)

Anyway, Damien *loves* denim and stocks The Lawn with an amazing variety of hard-to-find boutique brands from around the world. He has a strong preference for raw denim, and we must've then had a look that instantly conveyed "huh? what's raw denim?" because the then very nicely spelled it out for us. And we were intrigued.

Jeans made with raw denim have a super-stiff, unblemished finish – the minute you touch them, you know. We'd always avoided those jeans on the racks because they just seemed really uncomfortable, but it turns out there's a reason for that and it is: If you wear around raw denim jeans for awhile, it will start to naturally whisker and crease and get cool worn-in lines that match your body perfectly. And then after you break them in a bit, you can finally wash them and have the kind of jeans that are tailored to you, as opposed to the pre-made whiskers someone rubbed into your jeans in a factory. Metafilter has a bit more on the topic, in slightly more coherent form.

And so! We are curious about raw denim. Has anyone (besides Damien) tried this? Does it actually work? And is it really, really uncomfortable to wear raw denim jeans for the first few wearings? Please let us know.

{*Which is not too hard, considering we don't know all that much to start off with. But. Learning! Yay!}