34x34 Soak Day

This morning post-England v. Germany, I decided to do my warm soak of the newest 34x34 STF's in my jean arsenal. A few interesting details: I noticed that the faux-leather (aka paper) patch on the jeans listed them as a 501XX fit - which was interesting because every STF under $50 that I've seen has just read 501. I also noted that the jeans were of the "Made in Mexico" variety which, from a bit of online research and lurking at various message boards, apparently have very accurate shrinking and fit properties.

I sat in a warm bath with them on for about 20 minutes, and then got out to let them finish narrowing down. The fit was wearable even without soaking - the waist was decent, a tad long, and they felt rather fitted even before being exposed to water. I considered taking the "wear-the-crap-out-of-them-first" approach as proposed by many denim aficionados, particularly on styleforum.net, but decided against it given that doing so would cause any and all fades and wear to effectively shrink with the pants the first time they were laundered. A quick soak (less than an hour in warm water) I figured would take care of any shrinkage, while still preserving the majority of the indigo. This is one thing I noticed after hot-soaking the old 36/36's 3 times in less than 24 hours, and can be seen by the photos - they lightened up considerably even with just those few exposures to water. For maximum contrast in fades, I highly suggests keeping them away from water as much as possible for as long as possible. Here are fit pics pre-soak:

Again, I could immediately feel them tighten up when I sat in the water, and I tried to pay particular attention to the legs, as I felt the leg openings come up from being trapped under my heels to coming just above the sole of my foot while I was in the water. Impressive shrinkage in such a short amount of time. The waist I also felt go down maybe an inch or so - I'm not as concerned about shrinkage in the waist as of right now given that I'm reading a lot about how the waist will tend to stretch back out to around pre-soak measurements with simple wear.

Well, for now it's time to grab the jeans out of the bath (I took them off in there in order to get this post up) and jaunter on down to a friend's house for the Argentina v. Mexico game this afternoon. AGUANTE LOS GAUCHOS!!! VIVAN LOS ALBICELESTES!!!