If you’re familiar with Samurai Jeans, you’ll have recognized this gorgeous grainy textured faded denim straight away. The Osaka brand’s signature 19 oz. raw selvedge denim has been a darling of the raw denim niche for years now, and it’s submissions like this one from Ugo Duchamp that will help keep that indigo flame burning.
Ugo wore this pair of Benzak Denim Developers x Samurai BDDxSAM-01 jeans for around 400 days as part of the 2nd Benzak x Samurai fading contest, which ended in September of 2022. And while we’re not sure where Ugo placed in the contest, they shouldn’t really care, ‘cos these fades are prize enough.
That aforementioned 19 oz. raw selvedge denim has aged beautifully, forming a rough and grainy texture peppered with cobalt blue tones and crispy crease lines. Honeycombs, whiskers — all that good shit. My personal highlight, though, is the heavily faded lap and knee sections, the dye loss from which tapers off towards the darker indigo hems. There’s also some sexy crocking throughout the jean and some cheeky pocket fades that give the heavyweight denim that ‘lived in’ aesthetic.
But perhaps the most satisfying element of Ugo’s submission is that they report having machine washed these bad boys 5 times during their 400-day tenure. That’s a case for more frequent washing if I’ve ever seen one. In fact, we’re getting loads of submissions with 5 or more washes/soaks per year, so maybe the days of stinky denim are coming to an end.
