Low Culture Essay: John Doran on 16oz Japanese Raw Selvedge Indigo Denim

In the latest subscriber exclusive Low Culture Essay, John Doran reflects on class, craft and the risk of a flashed or crushed testicle in his life-long relationship with the denim trouser. Photos by Maria Jefferis.

I buy jeans like my life depends on it. Picture a water snake gliding along the surface tension of a narrow canal with no room for turning, each lateral undulation propelling it one aqueous slither at a time closer to the metallic gnaw of an Archimedes screw. It’s arguably more useful for the serpent to consider the pleasing sinusoidal patterns it creates in its wake – an appreciation of quotidian aesthetics in the moment – rather than thrashing about wildly at the sight of the spinning steel spiral of dismemberment ahead. Poor quality jeans are for the young and time rich. May they enjoy ill-fitting denim for many seasons to come. 

I was born at the start of the 70s in a small suburb of east Liverpool which was notable for several things: it was the site of the Rainhill Trials in 1829, a competition which saw George and Robert Stephenson’s novel locomotive The Rocket usher in the age of steam-powered passenger transport. It was also home to an unusually large Victorian insane asylum and the world’s first skew bridge. The foundation stones of the industrial revolution, the money it raised, the backbreaking labour it created and the madness it gave birth to were all dimly visible from my front door, but all of this was a barrier to the enjoyment of workwear, not a stimulus. 

From as early as I can remember I realised there was a great symbolic value to clothes. My Dad, who was born in 1934, spent every day of his working life on a furniture factory floor operating heavy duty compressors, but he was proud of the fact he was a skilled professional in a highly stratified working class environment. The thick denim overalls he wore every day were left in his locker when he clocked off. At all other times he wore a pressed shirt and smart slacks with shoes. He was weirdly like Mark E Smith in this way (and probably few others). Denim – as he told me on many occasions – was worn outside of factories by labourers, prisoners and idiots. He could just about handle seeing children wearing denim but would greet an adult in blue jeans with the kind of contempt that would normally be reserved for a mourner arriving at a funeral in a scuba-diving outfit.