Lumberjeans

Built with raw denim

We make our Lumberjeans with the same raw denim the lumberjacks wore, which is very different to the denim most jeans are made with today. These days denim normally goes through a series of treatments like stonewashing, sandblasting and lasering straight after it’s been dyed. It’s what makes a pair of new jeans feel soft and worn-in straight off the shelf. But by accelerating the wearing process these treatments weaken the denim. Raw denim is much tougher because it bypasses nearly all these treatments. It’s denim in its purest and most rugged form.

Raw denim ages better

Raw denim softens and moulds to the shape of your legs over time, eventually creating a fit that regular denim just can’t match. The jeans will also develop beautiful fade patterns too, with each pair fading differently depending on how they’re worn in. Some of the fade patterns have their own names, like honeycombs for the backs of the knees and whiskers for the thighs. Even the pockets where you keep your phone and wallet will develop their own patinas.

They soften up. Once you’ve broken them in

Since raw denim hasn’t been washed it retains more dye than regular denim. And this makes raw denim jeans feel pretty rigid and unforgiving when you first put them on. You literally have to break them in by wearing them over a couple of weeks. If you’ve ever owned a pair of raw denim jeans before, then you’ll know what we mean. If you haven’t, then you need to know that squats, roundhouse kicks and yoga are going to be off the cards for the first few weeks. But once you’ve broken them in, they’ll be the most comfortable jeans you’ve ever owned, and retain all the natural strength that denim is supposed to have.

Think before you wash them

How and when you first wash raw denim is still a contentious subject. Denim is a tough cotton twill fabric, which is normally indigo dyed to create its signature colour. So some denim purists will hold out for as long as possible before washing their jeans – normally until they can’t bear the smell anymore. This will give you higher contrast fades when you eventually do wash them, because the material has had more time to crease and fold as you wear it. You just need to be a bit careful what you sit on as the dye can leave marks. If you’re not bothered about fading patterns then you can wash the jeans relatively early on and the colour will be more uniform.

Combined with aramid fibres for extreme strength

To create some of the strongest jeans ever built we weave aramid fibres directly into the raw selvedge denim. On a weight for weight basis aramid fibres are 5x stronger than steel, which is why they’re normally used to make body armour and bulletproof vests. 8% of these Lumberjeans are pure aramid, making them an insanely hard-wearing pair of jeans.

Our denim is made in the birthplace of Japanese denim

To make denim this strong requires a special kind of partner, so we headed to the birthplace of Japanese denim. The Japanese city of Fukuyama has become a mecca for denim obsessives. Surrounded by the Chūgoku mountains on one side, and the Seto Inland Sea on the other, its unique climate has produced exceptional cottons since the Edo period. Today, Fukuyama is home to Kaihara, Japan’s top denim manufacturer. Founded in 1893 it started life making handwoven indigo-dyed bingo kasuri – a traditional fabric painstakingly woven on shuttle looms.

There was only one mill in the world we’d work with

People have been dyeing materials with indigo for around 6,000 years. Extracted from the leaves of a bean plant, it was once extremely rare. And Kaihara’s founder, Sukejiro Kaihara, was an indigo obsessive. In 1970 the mill developed Japan’s first rope-dyeing machine, allowing denim to be created by passing white darn through an indigo dye bath. This pioneering Japanese dyeing technique is key to creating the unique effect of one-of-a-kind raw denim, known by denim-heads as ‘cat whiskers’. So when it came to working with someone on developing our very first pair of jeans, we had a short list. It had to be Kaihara.

Onk-soushin, the philosophy of old meeting new

In a world of fast fashion and mass manufacturing there aren’t very many shuttle looms left. And there’s an even smaller number of skilled artisans capable of operating them. Today Kaihara has 200 looms still in active use and it runs them alongside their state of the art modern machinery. It’s a philosophy called “onk-soushin” – a way of producing new fabrics by working with old and new techniques at the same time. And it’s this philosophy that allows them to vertically integrate the whole process, from spinning and dyeing the denim, to weaving and finishing it too.

Dyed using painstaking rope-dyeing techniques

Kaihara’s denim is known for its unique depth of colour, texture and character. And it’s all thanks to the materials and dyeing processes they use. If you wanted to make jeans quickly or cheaply you wouldn’t do it the way they do. Our Lumberjeans are dyed using painstaking rope-dyeing techniques where yarns are suspended from the second floor of the factory before being slowly lowered into vats of indigo dye. Just as slowly as they go in, the yarns are then removed from the dye, allowing the dye to oxidise and stick to the cotton.

Kaihara’s environmental standards

As a manufacturer using natural cotton and indigo dyeing to produce its high-spec denim, Kaihara takes its coexistence with nature seriously, setting its own environmental standards that are far stricter than the Japanese national standard. So all of its waste water is filtered back into drinking water before it leaves the mill.

Jeans quickly became the lumberjacks’ uniform

The tailor had some experience with rugged materials. He already produced tents and wagon covers. So he made the trousers out of sturdy cotton duck, a heavy weight fabric with a twill weave. Another of his customers was the local blacksmith, who he used to supply with horse blankets with copper rivets built into the straps. So he hammered a few of these rivets into the pockets for good measure as he figured they might help this woodsman’s pants hold out a bit longer. Word of mouth soon spread. The new pants could take a beating like no pants before them. Jeans became the uniform of lumberjacks, loggers, railroad men and miners.

America’s second skin

Traditionally the weak link in workers’ pants had been the pockets. These men often worked on their hands and knees, using their pockets to carry tools and stones, so their pants tore easily. Rivets were a breakthrough. Soon companies selling these newfangled “waist overalls” sprang up everywhere. And this tough new uniform had one more benefit. It gave workers a sense of solidarity. An idea of belonging and enduring together. Esquire magazine called them ‘America’s second skin.’