In hygiene vs jeans, the unwashed scores

Like all things genetic, a pair of jeans can also be a precious hand-me-down. Levi’s vice-president (sustainability) Michael Kobori takes this seriously when he suggested to this paper that his company doesn’t want consumers to “dump jeans when they are finished with it. We seek it to be given to charity so that it gets recycled”. Better still, he insists that a bona fide pair of jeans — by which he means Levi’s, of course — shouldn’t be washed too many times. He himself doesn’t wash his pair before it’s worn “about 20 times”.

The issue of jeans, of course, boils down to nurture vs nature. The piece of clothing originally produced as work clothes from Genoa — its French name Gênes giving its moniker — was used by cowboys, miners and other working-class folk in America. Somewhere down the line, it became trendy gear, thanks to a 1950s youth culture driven by pin-ups such as James Dean and Marlon Brando. Not only would the original wearers of jeans have wondered why those hipsters and hippies wore them even when not engrossed in manual labour, but they would also have found it damned crazy why anyone would ever want to wash the poshed-up avatars of work pants even after their 20th, 30th or 40th wear. They would have found it as silly as people wanting to wear trousers that look old — even when they are brand new!