• Denim Therapy
• Calvin Klein jeans
• Lucky jeans
• Diesel jeans

Jeans, Reborn

Finding the right pair of great-fitting jeans can be, well, a pain in the you-know-what. So when that perfect pair gets holes in it, it can be a tragedy of the highest order.

Sure, every tear and patch hold a memory . . . but after a while, these memories render the garment structurally unsound. That's when it's time to call the jean doctors at Denim Therapy.

Denim Therapy co-founders Carla Schuftan and Francine Rabinovich are dungaree superheroes. Can they jump buildings in a single bound? Well, not exactly, but if they were to rip their Calvins in the act of trying such a daring feat, they'd be able to repair them sans patches or conspicuous sutures.

"All jeans can be fixed - every hole, every tear," explains Rabinovich. Last year, she and Schuftan, a longtime friend, realized they both had pairs of cherished-but-tattered jeans they'd been holding onto for years in hopes of finding the perfect mending solution. So they set out to research preservation techniques and learned to reweave jean fibers.

"When you get a pair of jeans, you want to get the most mileage possible. It's difficult to say you shouldn't put jeans in the dryer, or shouldn't lose or gain weight because the jeans could tear. Jeans should be your partner, and you shouldn't have restrictions on your clothing," says Rabinovich.

Simon Curtis, a 26-year-old New York City graduate student, has sent battered pairs of Lucky and Diesel jeans to Denim Therapy, hoping to have new life sewn into them. They came back revived, without having lost their character, he says.

"I had a pair of jeans sophomore year in college that I loved. I wore them every day, and they got big holes in both knees. I don't know why I kept them, but now I'm glad I did," he says.

He's learned a valuable lesson from the experience: Nothing lasts forever but, if you know the right superhero to call, jeans can come pretty close.

 

Posted on May 01, 2006