Wash your jeans twice a year, say global denim experts

Twinkle Khanna recently spoke about the time she found a pair of jeans in New York that she would end up wearing for 20 years. She also spoke about the time she was 17 and wore her favourite pair of jeans to college every day , and washed it as little as possible. While not all of us are witty columnists married to a Bollywood superstar, in that moment, we were all Twinkle Khanna. Because who doesn't own a pair of jeans they will happily live in for the rest of their lives? More importantly , who hasn't got into an argument with their mother for not wanting to wash that pair of jeans even after wearing it six, seven, eight times in a row?
If industry experts are anything to go by , your mother ­ for once ­ might be wrong.

Unwashed denim should remain so for at least seven months

At the Amsterdam Denim Days, a celebration of all things denim held in Amsterdam last month, how-often-do-you-wash-your-jeans was a topic of much-heated, but ultimately inconclusive, discussion. For a city that calls itself the denim capital of the world, Amsterdam has many designers working exclusively with unwashed denim, and some of them, like Lennaert Nijgh, insist on not washing a pair of jeans for at least six-seven months. According to designer Lennaert Nijgh, "When you wear your pair of jeans for a long period of time without washing it, it starts to reflect your lifestyle. That's the point of unwashed denim. You make it into your own, however you like it. When you wash raw denim and it goes all soft, that's the fibres breaking down." On the other hand, Koen Tossijn, another Dutch designer who makes made-to-measure jeans, mostly for men, said that he wasn't anal about washing jeans.

Some major brands agree with the philosophy

Last year, Levi's CEO Chip Bergh said, "You should keep your jeans out of the washing machine." He added that he hadn't washed his jeans in over a year. Tommy Hilfiger once said, "I never wash my Levi's. They'll fall apart. I love them broken in." When asked about the idea of washing a pair of jeans after every wear, he said, "that's crazy".Television personality Anderson Cooper had also revealed that he wears the same pair of jeans every day and washes them only four times a year.

How long do you go without washing your jeans?

While going without washing your jeans for six months in the Indian summer sounds like a punishable offense, we still found denimheads who don't wash their favourite pair for as long as they can without assaulting their friends' senses (or risking the wrath of their mother), for various reasons.Says Bhavika Nanda, 24, "When I was in college I used to doodle all the time. On my desk, on paper, on my clothes. Sometimes I would doodle on my jeans, so I didn't like to wash them often. I washed them maybe once a month, and that too, when they got really filthy. My mother hated this ­ the doodling and the not-washing part."