A Slight Hiccup in the Process

The soaks didn't pan out as planned for my 36/36 STFs. After soaking them and letting them dry on me, I still considered them far too baggy to be in good taste; the waist had shrunk a decent amount, perhaps the indicated two inches, but the legs remained almost as loose as they had been pre-soak. So, I hot-soaked the jeans twice more (once in the washing machine on a hot, gentle cycle and once more in the bathtub with the tap as hot as it could get) hoping to get them a bit smaller.

Sadly, my efforts were in vain as can be seen from the photos following. The jeans were still far too relaxed in their final shrink, and so I dug out my Dillard's receipt and gathered all of the merchandising from the pair of jeans and made a trek out to the mall. Upon trying to exchange them for another smaller pair, the attendee kind of gave me a funny look as I described why I was returning them. I guess he hadn't been briefed on the products he was selling... sheesh... mindless retail people :)

I had enjoyed how the denim stiffened up to an extreme degree while they dried. The fabric didn't quite reach the "sandpaper" level as claimed by other blogs and denim aficionados that I have read, but the denim was definately hard enough and condusive to creases and creating those stress lines that eventually will fade.

In the end, I was able to exchange them for a 34/34 of the same cut and color. I had liked the way the 36 length worked out, but considering these specific pairs aren't selvedge denim there's not really a need to cuff the jeans to show it off. So, the current 34 length should work out fine.

An interesting side note that I discovered upon returning home with the smaller pair: I laid them out to see how measurements compared between the LVC 501xx's and this new "cheap" pair I had obtained. The waists of both now lined up exactly and the cut through the butt and upper thighs were extremely simliar. It appears that size correlation between the LVC 501's and the commonplace STF's are two inches. Example:

LVC 1947 501xx - 36/36

is most similar in size to a

501 STF - 34/36

in general.

So, in the case of purchase, I would suggest based on what I have personally witnessed that those interested in purchasing decent-fitting 501 STF (a post-shrink straight to slim fit) to purchase the raw denim at your normal waist size with an extra 2 inches in the length. The STFs appear to be sized slightly larger initially than the tag says (whether or not this is to help account for shrinkage remains to be seen).

This would correlate in '47 LVC sizing (each LVC cut is different and I throw this in to be specific) to purchasing 2 inches greater than your normal waist size and either 2 or 4 inches greater in length, depending if you wanted to cuff the selvedge denim.

See? This experiment is paying off already.

Well, I plan tomorrow to conduct a hot soak in the bathtub of these new 34/34's to see how they behave, and if necessary I will ammend my comments above.

- Joseph