7 Things You Should Know About Jeans as Told by a Denim Expert

There’s no other fabric with a history that equates to the rich heritage of denim wear, whose long history is practically rooted within the fabric of Americana from Levi’s workwear to its adoption into greaser and punk subcultures. Enter denim expert Scott Morrison, the founder of 3×1 (one of America’s finest custom denim shops) who’s worked with some of the world’s highest quality jeans and is also the man responsible for Earnest Sewn and paper denim & cloth. GQ recently sat down with Morrison to gain insight on the ins-and-outs of the industry from the best denim fabrics to caring for and finding the perfect pair of jeans. View excerpts from the interview below, and read the full piece here.

How do you decide which fabrics are best when creating a new pair of jeans?
In most cases we’re working with mills to develop products from scratch: selecting yarns, indigo shades, weights, and selvedge ID. As you’d expect, each mill usually has a specific trait or specialty, and we try to develop fabrics according to their strength. Isko in Turkey, for example, is known for its stretch denim, while Kurabo in Japan is known for its original selvedge dye range and its beautiful green casts. Collect (also Japanese) is focused on redefining authenticity and revisiting yesteryear. What’s important is knowing who is the best to go to for what type of product, and that’s the great thing we pass on to our customers.

What’s the best weight—how many ounces—for a pair of year-round jeans?
Lightweights, 9–10 oz., are great for summer and vacation use. 11–12 oz. is my ideal year-round weight for almost everyone. The denim enthusiast probably considers 13 oz. to be the lightest he would consider, and that’s really the starting point of the mid-heavy-weight denim, which can range from 13 to 16 oz. Novelty weights are anything above 16 oz., in my book. For 95 percent of the guys who walk into 3×1, we’re putting them into 11–13-oz. denims.

What do you think is better fabric, traditional raw or selvedge styles or modern washed denim?
I think there’s a place for both raw and washed denim. My only preference is that you use selvedge denim for both, as I think the best denim in the world comes from a shuttle loom.

What is the best way to care for your favorite jeans?
If you have a raw jean, the best advice is to go as long as you possibly can without washing for the first time, and in a perfect world that should be four to six months of everyday wear. When you’re ready to wash, turn them inside out, lay them in cold water, put a little of our “Denim Solution” in the water or Woolite Dark. Just leave it there for 45 minutes to an hour. Then just pull them out, spray them off with clean, fresh water, and let them air dry. The only time you want to scrub it or agitate it by hand is when you have a deeply soiled stain and you’ve got no other option.

What is the ideal lifespan of a quality pair of denim?
Your denim will last as long as you are willing to take care of it. I mean, wear and wash with consideration, and mend it when required. Most raw-denim jeans will have a blowout or two. It’s inevitable and totally normal. What’s creating that wear is a combination of your activity and the starch that’s been added to your denim in order to make it more usable in cutting and sewing. A few tips for keeping your jeans going for as long as possible: Always hang your jeans, never fold. Wash inside out only when needed, and repair whenever you first start to see them looking threadbare, i.e., having a hole.