DENIMandPATCHES

Outdated Archetypes, a Pair of Jeans I’ve Never Worn, and Why Fit Comes First

Raw denim has been my life for the better part of two decades. And yet, on any given day, you could walk past me on the street and have absolutely no idea what I do for a living.

I have a uniform. The foundation is a pair of regular straight jeans, mid-rise. A quality t-shirt, slightly boxy fit, usually white—lately, often the one from my own brand. And then on top, a plaid flannel. So far, pretty standard raw denim guy.

Then you look at my feet. Sneakers. Not Iron Rangers anymore, not engineer boots, not even a clean leather trainer. Slip-ons or running-inspired silhouettes. Sometimes, actual running shoes. And when it’s too long since my last haircut, I’ll also be wearing a (raw denim) baseball cap or my Heimat beanie.

That might read as style confusion. I’d say it’s what happens when you know your own denim style well enough that you don’t need to follow the rules anymore.

That’s what the style guide from the “New to Raw Denim” series is about: helping you find your direction before you start building a wardrobe—so that when you eventually ignore the rules, you’re doing it knowingly.

In This Issue of the DH Weekly

It starts with a pair of jeans I’ve never worn—and why that has everything to do with finding your denim style before you buy. This issue covers the style guide from my New to Raw Denim series.

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10 Denim Styles (Archetypes Revisited)

I first mapped out denim style archetypes a decade ago in Blue Blooded. Types of person, not just directions. It made sense at the time.

Going back to that work for the new style guide, I kept some, dropped some, and rethought the entire framing. The person-based labels felt too fixed. Nobody is The Cowboy or The Rebel. But plenty of people lean that way, mix a bit of both, and build a wardrobe around it without ever putting a name on it.

Some of these styles are genuinely denim-first—Cowboy, Rebel, Hippie. Pull the jeans out, and the look falls apart. Others, like Military or Streetwear, are more complicated: denim belongs there, but it’s not the anchor.

Maybe you always reach for a loose, straight cut and you’ve been pairing it with flannels and work boots without thinking twice—that’s not random, that’s what I’ve defined as Workwear style in the guide.

Or maybe you wear slim straight jeans, a white tee, and a leather jacket every time—that’s Rebel, and maybe you are too. Or you’re the guy in the relaxed fit, the big Oxford shirt, the 90s trainers—Dad Style, and you’re in good company.

Most people already have a denim style of their own. The guide just names it. Which of these is yours? That’s what the guide is for.

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Why Fit Comes First

Years ago, I was gifted a pair of Levi’s Vintage Clothing 1915 jeans—produced in 2010, as best I can tell. Made in the USA from Cone Mills selvedge. No belt loops, suspender buttons, a cinch-back, a cut so high-rise and wide in the leg that it belongs to a different era entirely.

Objectively, they’re very special jeans. The kind you don’t just go out and buy. But I’ve barely worn them.

As I was digging through my stack of jeans looking for those LVCs writing this Weekly, I found another pair that proves the point just as well: a pair of Wrangler Bluebell 11MW, also gifted to me. Never worn outside the house. Not once.

The cowboy aesthetic has crept into my peripheral vision lately—Yellowstone, Instagram, people like Albert Muzquiz wearing it with total confidence. Maybe it’s time I wear them, but I digress.

The point is that both pairs have been sitting there more or less unworn for years. Not because they were the wrong size, or even the wrong fit. But because they didn’t fit my style at all.

That’s what fit actually does. It’s not just about how jeans sit on your body. It’s about where they point the whole outfit. Know that first, then find your archetype.

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The Full Series Is Already Live

The guide that this Weekly is all about is part of the New to Raw Denim series. If you know your denim style, the next guide shows you what to actually build around it. Or start at the hub and go from there.

I’d also like to know what you think of this format. These guides are something I want to work well for people coming to Denimhunters for the first time, and if you’ve been reading the Weekly for a while, you’re exactly the person I want to hear from.

The post Denim Style Guide: Find Your Lane Before You Start Buying appeared first on Denimhunters.

DENIM and PATCHES sourced this post originally published on this site

15 Years in a Timeline, a Guilty Confession, and Finally Creating My “New to Raw Denim” Series

“How did you start your journey with Denimhunters?” That’s not a made-up hypothetical question; someone actually asked me this recently.

If one person asks it, there are probably a thousand others who’ve wondered the same thing and never bothered. I decided it was time to finally write down the answer.

Denimhunters turns fifteen this year. And I have a big birthday coming up—one that ends with a zero (and begins with a four). It felt like a good moment to share the full story.

Fifteen years is a long time to do anything. Long enough to make plenty of mistakes, rebuild more than once, and eventually—finally—get to a place where the site is actually the thing, not the side thing.

In This Issue of the DH Weekly

This issue is about the origin story of Denimhunters—fifteen years told through a set of “why” questions, part of the New to Raw Denim series. Plus a full timeline of the site, the guilty-side-project years, and some of what led me to even start the site.

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The DH Weekly is my Friday column on raw denim and heritage menswear. If you found this through the New to Raw Denim series, this is where the conversation continues.

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Denimhunters Timeline: Fifteen Years, In Order

This issue is about the story behind the site. What follows is the full timeline, with the parts that didn’t make it into the origin story in the series.

2011 (January 30) – Denimhunters launches in Danish, because there’s nowhere in Danish for people who want to understand raw denim.

2012 – The site grows from a personal project into something bigger, with contributors and the first signs that it could become more than just me writing about jeans.

2013 – Denimhunters has a booth at Bread & Butter in Berlin—twice—literally placing the site alongside Clutch Magazine, Men’s File, and Heritage Post. On my honeymoon in the US, I get a private tour of the Levi’s archive in San Francisco with Lynn Downey.

2014 – Things get more ambitious, with partners involved and a drop-shipping webshop that never quite becomes the business I hoped it would.

2015 – The partnership ends. I keep the name and the domain, lose most of the content with traffic, and rebuild the version of Denimhunters you’re reading now.

2016 (May) – Blue Blooded is published by Gestalten, turning my early years of research, retail experience, and denim obsession into my first book.

2017 – The Denimhunters Academy launches as a paid video course. It teaches me plenty, but it doesn’t become the business I’d hoped for either.

2018 – I focus on Instagram, including the Blue Blooded Instagrammers Q&A-series.

2019 – The Denim & Boots Podcast launches in April. Bryan Szabo’s first article appears in the autumn. In the winter, the Blue Blooded Portfolio series becomes the last project that follows the site’s old logic: good stories, strong content, no obvious business plan.

2020 – I launch The Denimhunters Podcast, build my Denim Encyclopedia, and Bryan and I begin working on what becomes the Well-Made Essentials.

2021 – During COVID, I take a full-time job in another industry after practically giving up on Denimhunters ever becoming the thing I could do for a living. It results in an existential crisis, and I nearly hand over control of the site. I quit that job in April, 2022.

2022 (October) – The Rebel’s Wardrobe is published, growing out of the Well-Made Essentials work Bryan and I had been building together.

2023 – Bryan and I create and publish the Rebel’s Outfit special issue of Heritage Post, which proves more commercially successful than the book itself. I also start working on what becomes my own brand, Weirloom.

2024 – My decade-long BESTSELLER consulting work ends. Freelancing work continues, but the old safety net changes, and Denimhunters has to earn real money.

2025 – I launch Weirloom, while Denimhunters starts generating real revenue more consistently through buying guides and affiliate income.

2026 – Fifteen years in, Denimhunters is closer than ever to standing on its own.

The full story covers all of this in more depth—including the “why” behind each decision, the partnerships that went wrong, the years when the site nearly disappeared, and what any of it has to do with growing up in a part of Denmark with wide open spaces and very low ceilings.

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The Guilty Part

For the longest time, running Denimhunters felt like something I did on the side. Not in the entrepreneurial, aspirational sense—but in the feeling-super-guilty-about-it sense.

It was the thing I did when I was supposed to be doing something else. The work I’d open when I had a deadline. The tab I’d switch to when my concentration drifted. It was fun. It was also procrastination. And those two were entirely compatible.

Something shifted in 2025. The site finally started generating real money—consistently, for the first time. I’d set a goal for the year, and I beat it by way more than I expected. The revenue has found a new plateau since, and I’m still getting used to the feeling that this is now my actual work.

This year has been about doing the things I’ve been putting off. My guide to the best denim brands and the one about Japanese denim brands—I don’t think anything like it exists elsewhere. My shop guide series. And now my New to Raw Denim series, which I’ve wanted to build for years and finally did.

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Before There Was Denimhunters …

If you watched The Sopranos—maybe more than once, like me—you’ll remember A.J., Tony’s son. He never quite fits the mould; he’s restless and doesn’t know what he wants—except what he’s got isn’t it.

That was me. The other kids were into soccer and mopeds. I played guitar, skateboarded, and was drawn as much to the gear and the clothes as to actually doing either. I was shy and introverted. I blush easily—my friends called me “Red,” and it wasn’t only because of my hair.

In 2008, during my bachelor’s in Aarhus, I got a part-time job at [ei’kon]—the leading menswear store in the city, carrying A.P.C., Edwin, and even the first Indigofera collection. Per Olsen, the store manager, brought me to trade shows. Tommy Rasmussen, the owner, became a mentor—one of the first people I called when I started Weirloom.

In the summer of 2010, I graduated and moved to Copenhagen. I spent a year as a buyer and deputy manager of a Samsøe & Samsøe shop, reading From Cowboys to Catwalk in every spare moment, half-dreaming of writing something like it. It was there that I first went to Bread & Butter in Berlin—and that’s when I launched Denimhunters.

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The Full Series Is Already Live

I wrote the story about the site first. It felt like the natural beginning—the “why” before the “what.” But once I had it, I realised it couldn’t go first in the actual series.

If you’re new here, you don’t know me yet—and if you don’t know me, the story of how I got here probably doesn’t mean all that much. So the practical guides needed to go first in the series. But here, for the DH Weekly, it makes more sense to lead with the story.

For the rest of July, I’ll be publishing Weeklies about the other parts, with some context around each of them. But if you’d rather not wait, the whole series is already live.

If something in this story surprised you, or if the format doesn’t work for you, I’d love your feedback.

The post I Wrote My Story, Then Built the One Thing This Site Was Missing appeared first on Denimhunters.

DENIM and PATCHES sourced this post originally published on this site

A Rewritten Fit Guide, and a Ton of Restocks

Summer’s here, the kids are out of school, I’m at Roskilde Festival this week, and after that, I’ve just got one week left at the desk before this year’s summer holiday.

I’ll be out of the office from July 10 through August 2—physically and mentally. That’s three issues’ worth of the DH Weekly, and while I could’ve paused it, I’ve been building real momentum this year, and I don’t want to lose it. (Plus, a few of you told me you actually look forward to these, and I don’t want to let you down 🥹)

At the same time, I’ve promised myself—and my wife—that I won’t be working (too much) while we’re away. So no weekly issues from the road. I also realise that most of you will probably be taking some time off this month too. And the last thing you want to come back to after a good holiday is an inbox full of “news” emails from me.

All of that made me realise that this is the perfect opportunity to do something I’ve wanted to do for years: create a proper “start here” series for anyone who’s new to raw denim and to Denimhunters.

It’s a big job—just like the shop guide series I published a few weeks back—but it’s the kind of thing that can roll out over several weeks, something you can take your time with once you’re back at your desk … and it has “long-tail” written all over it.

Working on it, I went back to one of the site’s oldest guides—a true cornerstone. And found a foundational crack in it. Now fixed, it’s this week’s lead story.

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I Found a Critical Flaw in My Fit Guide

Finding jeans that actually fit should be easier than it is. The problem isn’t just inconsistent sizing—it’s that most fit advice, including my own, sometimes gets it all wrong.

Going back into my fit guide while building that new series, I found a mistake. The original guide treated fit and leg shape as one thing. A “slim straight” or a “tapered” fit was listed as a single factor—when in reality, those are two completely separate factors.

The rewrite separates them properly.

• Fit category (slim, regular, or loose) is about how close the cut is designed to sit to your leg.
• Leg shape (straight, tapered, or flared) is about what the leg does from the knee down.

They work on different axes entirely, which is exactly why the same pair can be described so differently from one brand to the next.

Rise is the third factor, now with a proper explanation of the yoke—the V-shaped back panel that’s the actual construction mechanism determining how the rise sits and curves on your body.

And fabric is what I call “the hidden” fourth factor: it doesn’t change the silhouette, but it changes how any given silhouette actually feels to wear.

If you’ve ever bought a pair that looked right and felt wrong, an issue with one or more of those four things is usually why.

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10 Months in, and the Finish Line in Sight

The tenth monthly submission for the Indigo Invitational is due July 7th. I’m competing in a pair of WL-001 ‘Second Edition’ jeans—though I’m not really in the race, since I’ll be helping with the judging again this year.

I launched Weirloom in April last year and—while I wore prototypes before that, and a pair of the ‘First Editions’ for a few months—this is the longest I’ve worn a pair of my own jeans.

So ten months in, and we’re now in the final stretch. Bryan put the last mile right in the middle of summer—a little cruel, maybe, but also smart. The heat speeds up the process, which means the fades are moving faster.

The pocket bags on my jeans are holding up exceptionally well. Usually, this is the first thing to go on other jeans I’ve worn, and there’s no sign of that here. The denim fades easily and all over, giving the jeans a nice vintage-fade look, and the slubs are really coming through.

If you’re also in the competition too, remember to submit your fades before July 7th.

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Things Worth Your Attention

My inbox has been overflowing with drops and restocks since the last issue. Here’s what I think’s worth your attention right now.

Franklin & Poe Restocks PBJ, Big John and Freenote

Pure Blue Japan’s flagship XX fabric is back, alongside a new one for the brand: Teacore, woven from black-dyed threads over a brown core that fades into a black-and-brown tapestry.

Big John brings back the 16 oz. Wild Duck wide leg plus two new pairs, including the dense 17 oz. M1803. And Freenote Cloth has a new Kaihara fabric, the 50s, with a broken-in hand straight off the bolt.

F&P also got some new Indigofera in. The wide-leg, high-rise Dukes are back in 14.5 oz. Gunpowder denim, known for its fade potential, and the Wendell—their riff on the double-knee work pant—now in a new 14 oz. black denim with a thick, substantial hand.

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Brooklyn Clothing’s Big Summer Delivery

Calgary’s denim destination also got the Pure Blue Japan XX restock—in both the 019 Relaxed Taper and 005 Straight, after a two-year wait—alongside chino trousers and heavyweight jersey tops.

Buzz Rickson’s brings loopwheeled slub henleys and herringbone work shirts on vintage military patterns. From The Flat Head, they got a new 5 oz. selvedge chambray work shirt, plus a restock of the 18 oz. selvedge denim. And Wonder Looper has a hand-dyed crewneck using Amami’s mud-dyeing process.

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Redcast Got Some Flat Head, John Lofgren, and Deluxeware

This week, Redcast got back the 10 oz. indigo wabash western (including sizes 46 and 48), the 14.5 oz. Type II jacket, the 10 oz. denim work shirt, and the 12.5 oz. wide tapered jeans in black. Also back: the horsehide Single Rider’s jacket, built to mould to the body over time, and just f#cking gorgeous.

On the accessories side, John Lofgren’s Leather Care Kit is restocked—brushes, creams, cleaner, and a Paulownia wood box from Toyama. The leather cleaner is available separately too, along with their heritage-stripe socks in two-packs.

And if you’re after a loopwheel tee, Deluxeware’s DXTS-00 is the top of their lineup—12.5 oz., knitted seamless, sewn on a customised vintage Union Special. They run small, so size up from your usual size.

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Iron Heart’s Loopwheel Tees Are Back, With a Story

The heavyweight champs just dropped a big range of loopwheeled T-shirts, including the long-awaited IHT-1610L.

What I like here isn’t just the restock. Iron Heart is based in Japan, with direct access to the factories that produce their loopwheeled tees—and they’ve written up how the fabric is made and why it behaves the way it does. Worth a read.

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KATO’s Pail Fit Guide, on Four Different Builds

Their loose straight, high-rise cut, built around something most fit guides skip entirely: the same pair, shown on four different guys at four different heights, front and back.

It’s a good illustration of exactly what I mean in this week’s lead story—the same fit reads differently depending on who’s wearing it.

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Tellason: Item of the Week and a 4th of July Sale

Plaid and chambray, straight from their San Francisco factory, 20% off until there’s a new pick of the week tomorrow.

Tellason are running a 4th of July sale too—20% off everything on site through end of day July 4th. Last chance if you’re reading this in time.

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Gustin’s Indigo Acid: Not What You Think

Gustin’s latest is a 10.5 oz. crosshatch denim with a deep indigo warp and a strongly tinted yellow weft—the crosshatch grain lets that yellow show through, giving the denim a subtle acid-yellow tint.

Nothing to do with acid wash; the name comes from the colour effect. Available in the 5 Pocket and Workshirt.

Gustin are running an Independence Day stock sale too—up to 50% off, through July 4th.

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From the Archive: Raw Denim Brands

Once you’ve got fit figured out, the next question is usually: which brands are actually worth looking at?

The Best Raw Denim Brands guide covers more than 50 makers—Japanese selvedge specialists, American independents, European labels—with enough context on each to help you figure out where to start.

The post My Fit Guide Finally Helps You Find Jeans That Actually Fit appeared first on Denimhunters.

DENIM and PATCHES sourced this post originally published on this site