Advice: vibrant clothes, patina and wear of materials

For several years now, people have started to buy their clothes better: they are educating themselves on quality, know-how, shapes and colors.

And they're willing to invest a little more in their wardrobe... When it's justified of course.

But some are quickly surprised by the fact that the clothes "live":

"My shirt shrunk/expanded a little after two years, and my jeans faded slightly! Yet I thought I had invested in quality..."

“It’s weird, there are small irregularities in the material”

“This linen shirt is really not practical, it is wrinkled after a day, which was not the case with my old cotton shirts”

This article will help you differentiate between a quality problem and normal clothing characteristics .

In short, take a step back on what we can expect from quality clothing.

Living and natural materials

What I call a “living material” is a natural material, which will live its life, move a little, adapt to your body shape, develop a patina...

It is an imperfect but human and living material, and therefore beautiful in its texture, its authenticity, its poetry (see Japanese doctrine of wabi sabi ).

1. Fading indigo

The most common example is of course the indigo of raw jeans . As a reminder, Milone, a workwear specialist, has written two in-depth articles on indigo: the history of indigo and the use of indigo around the world .

Indigo is a pigment - in general - natural, not very fixative by nature, but that is its whole point .

This results in jeans or shirts that will fade over time, where the material rubs and works the most, reflecting your lifestyle and habits.

The more the yarn is dyed with a high density of indigo pigments, right down to the heart of the fiber, the more subtle the wash that will then appear , with reflections ranging from turquoise to sky blue, sometimes even emerald or touching on reds. and the purples on certain canvases treated with pomegranate peel for example .

The jeans with the most beautiful washes even find their place in Halls of Fame on the Internet , and there is a whole community around raw denim washes, which enjoys, for example, slipping coins or other small objects in the pockets to then see them appear through transparency when the exterior canvas fades.

It's a material that changes, which develops a patina, even if it means bleeding a little pigment onto your sneakers or the inside of your blazers. But it is a material that lives.

It's 1,000 times more interesting than having jeans with artificially fixed colors, which fade without subtlety instead of getting a patina: that's what I call dead materials.

Our advice for choosing and wearing jeans is here

2. Wear and aging of leather

We find exactly the same thing with leather.

On the one hand, we have vegetable leathers which are animal skins, but tanned with bark, resins, and natural oils. .

These leathers develop a patina, wrinkle in places that rub, and smooth out in others when they are stretched. . But they live with you, they are witnesses to your history, they retain this organic and raw side which makes it leather, and not an alien substance coming out of the KGB labs .

On the other hand, there are metal tanning which “kill” the leather; fix it completely.

These are the most used leathers, both for reasons of cost, but also for reasons of consumer preferences, particularly in women's fashion where the customer prefers that her accessories and shoes maintain a clean and unalterable appearance over time. . Ditto for a good part of men's luxury.

I can completely understand that, but the important thing is not to mistake vegetable leather that develops a patina for bad leather, under the pretext that it would get "dirty" more quickly .

The real problem is leather that is completely dead and suffocated, like bookbinded leather, which is leather that is scraped, sanded, and covered with a plastic film .

It looks very nice and clean in the store, it allows poor quality and grained leather to pass off as cream, except that it wears disgustingly, it doesn't patina at all, it dries out quickly under the plastic film, and it creates lots of folds where the leather works . To be completely avoided!

Moreover, the Jacques et Demeter brand has published a fascinating article on vegetable tanning .

To read our leather guide, click here

3. Cotton that fluffs

Another phenomenon often taken for a lack of quality: cotton which fluffs as it wears, and which becomes softer .

Some quality cottons, especially thick fabrics, are precisely designed to last and soften and fluff over time (that's the whole point).

Especially since cotton that has been artificially fluffed is called... flannel.

Except that for flannel, the process is a little more abrasive , while good cotton fluffs naturally, and its solidity is preserved.

Want to know the history of the t-shirt? There she is

4. Linen that wrinkles

Well, this might make some people smile, but we sometimes get feedback from readers who complain that their linen shirt creases more than a cotton shirt .

Of course, it is unpleasant and quickly becomes neglected to wear a shirt covered in large creases, but we are not talking here about extreme cases, but only about a few creases on the back at the end of a day where it was hot.

It is therefore nothing other than an intrinsic property of linen . It wrinkles, it lives, well yes, and that's how it is, it's part of the trip. And in return, it's more airy, it's much more solid than cotton.

We must remember that creases on clothes are completely normal, and we must completely move away from this sanitized vision of a wrinkle-free outfit that sometimes overzealous beginners have from looking at lookbooks. where clothes are retouched on the computer.

Especially since it is the outfits that are too clean, without wrinkles, with materials without relief, and without a hair sticking out, that make nice boy looks too smooth. . A little spontaneity and letting go never hurt anyone !

Our complete guide to linen

5. Oiled cotton and its nuances

I'm not going to dwell on the oiled cotton of the " Barbour type" jackets, but again it oozes at first, it's a little greasy, but it calms down afterwards, and after a season the result is magnificent.

As if you've been traveling your whole life in this jacket.

It was worth getting your hands a little dirty at the start!

6. Quality wool that fluffs a little, then not at all

Linting wool is not a sign of poor quality .

In the case of high quality wools, and in particular fine cashmere , linting is an inevitable step, the result of the evacuation of short fibers.

The real difference between quality and wild cotton is not visible until around ten washes :

• Quality : lint appears quickly but then gradually disappears on fine wools,

• Smut : fluff appears more slowly , but the process then lasts a very long time, even for life, until the material and holes are completely thinned.

7. Foolproof virgin wools

Another misconception about wool.

Many consumers summarize the situation as:

• soft wool = quality

• rough wool = junk

Yet nothing is WRONG!

The wool from fast fashion chains is always super soft, because it is full of softeners : so much cover-up which hides a wool which will become rough and "flat" afterwards, and very often will disintegrate, fluff for life, and will wear holes in a few washes, due to lack of sufficient density of long fibers

It's a bit like the equivalent of bookbinded leather, which these chains are also fond of.

On the other hand, a wool of choice is rough, and lasts for years, while softening . This is for example the case with very beautiful lambswool.

Help, your sweater is pilling, we'll explain why

The material that moves the least?

Well it's synthetic!

Synthetic is relatively inert. It will hardly move after being put in the washing machine and tumble dryer.

On the other hand, it is a material which has many faults :

• No breathability
• No more body odor appearing
• Poor, standardized colors, without nuances
• It doesn't patina, it wears ugly
• Oh yes, and it shines very quickly when subjected to friction (= magnificent shiny halos under the elbows and on the knees of poor quality suits).

In short, it's a perfect material if you don't care about your image, your comfort, and overall the quality of your clothes.

Perfect if you make a ball of it in the evening, hop in the machine at 90°, and relax the next day with the shirt and suit that make you sweat on public transport.

But after all, everyone has their own choice + .

Natural treatments

Well, you understand the thing about materials, and I could have cited lots of other examples.

Then comes the treatment: dyes, coating , flaming , calendering , etc.

As I wrote, starting from the same natural material , we can quite achieve a material that retains its vital force, or a sanitized and dead result, such as metal-tanned leathers or wools stuffed with additives.

Respect for your health

In the end, choosing living clothing is a bit like choosing to eat organic food, with their small visual defects, but real taste and the absence of preservatives which harm us in the long term.

The element that must be taken into account here is the chemical dimension.

There are harmless mechanical primers but also chemical primers .

Certainly certain chemical agents can improve a fabric , but you must always be careful about their toxicity .

In the early days of BonneGueule, I had an allergy. in the middle of a press evening while I was testing a shirt from a low-end brand.

There are labels attesting to the non-harmfulness of materials, but they are mainly present at the high end.

We can cite the international labels bluesign® , OEKO-TEX® , or the European label Master of Linen®

That said, the best way to avoid risks is to favor 100% natural materials, also treated in a natural way (or via mechanical finishes).

Respect for the environment and people

For a fabric that will give you allergies, one can easily imagine what its large-scale production inflicts on the workers in the factories that produce it. The same goes for nature and for cases of poisoning of water consumed by populations.

Isn't it reassuring to know that the clothing you buy and wear doesn't make a mess 10,000 km from home, or even cause deaths?

Thank you living materials.

The case of natural dyes

Finally, there are more and more natural dyes, especially for cotton.

The phenomenon is still recent, we cannot yet find all the shades , but we still manage to produce very beautiful blue, brown, ocher, red, violet, beige and ecru colors with 100% natural pigments .

Of course there is natural indigo, but we can also mention avocado skins (purple), cochineal (red), henna (brown), rose buds (pink), wood bark (brown). , beige), or even saffron (yellow).

Here again we are dealing with materials that live : the pigments are less fixed and they fade in places like shirts and jeans dyed with indigo.

Besides the fixings can also be natural: alum, oxalyc acid (extracted from rhubarb), cream of tartar, gallic acid (extracted from a type of carob), sodium carbonate (already used by the Egyptians), iron sulfate , etc.

The final shades are not necessarily super uniform, but this is what gives real, more raw looks, anchored in real reality. Brands like Visvim or GANT Rugger are also developing these uses a lot.

I also advise you to take a look at the website of the Johanna Riplinger brand, entirely developed using natural pigments. Its creator also develops her own materials, some very beautiful, with partners located in India .

The soul of clothing

Finally, living materials bring a certain extra soul to a garment .

Knowing the history of its design, its production techniques, and who the hands were that held the thread and the needle, is to take with you some of the men and women who intervened in the process.

And I don't think it's just a psychological thing, or a good conscience.

But rather all the micro-details that we don't see clearly at first glance, but which make us say to ourselves "this garment fits really well, it sweats something, it really has a look" .

Objects with several lives

“Luxury is what can be repaired” Charles-Émile Hermès (1831-1876)

It's a little saying that the clothing industry has really forgotten in recent years.

However, it is a real gauge of the quality of a product: we prefer to repair an item of clothing or resole shoes that are showing their age and scratches well rather than throwing them away and replacing them.

Because quality clothing gets a patina instead of wear.

I would even say that the more patina and small scratches they take on, the more "looking" they look. A bit like a person, they gain character. This also gives them their soul guarantee.

The Japanese (them again) even have an art that I find brilliant: Kintsugi. It involves repairing broken objects (especially ceramics) using a lacquer sprinkled with gold powder.

The brokenness is then highlighted and magnified. It's a beautiful philosophy that respects the object's past, and presents its accidents not as a date of disposal, but as the beginning of the next cycle of use.

We can also talk about Boro fabrics, basically the kimonos patched with crude seams (sashiko) of the poor of the last century. These are now collector's items:

How long can we really expect from clothing?

1. The frequency factor

Last important point, when you rebuild your wardrobe, you must take into account the frequency of wear.

Often, a beginner who begins to overhaul his wardrobe will only wear his new clothes that he loves, simply because at this stage he has few items of clothing that he is really satisfied with.

This is why some people will wear the same shirt 1 or 2 days a week for example. And ultimately be surprised that it gives out after 1 or 2 years, even though 100 wears and washes are completely acceptable (try to visualize 100 complete wash cycles, plus the intensive wear behind ).

No wonder then that a very nice shirt reveals a hole in the elbow after 2 or 3 years of intensive wear, or that Japanese canvas jeans give you a hole in the crotch after 2 years if you wear it every other day, possibly combined with good thighs, weight changes or motorcycle trips.

Here is a short list of the acceptable lifespan of a garment, with a reasonable wearing frequency (2 to 4x/month) , a garment chosen in your size without any particular tension or friction. , and compliance with maintenance conditions :

• T-shirt : difficult to say, even at the entry level. Cotton t-shirts are strong because cotton jersey is a stable material that lasts over time. A t-shirt can therefore easily last several years, except for mixtures of more fragile materials such as cotton/silk on very high-end t-shirts, or on really light weights.

• Shirt : more or less three years. A beautiful material can last over time. It is above all the quality of the heat-sealing of the collar which determines its lifespan. It is he who allows the collar to hold (or not).

• Chino : about three years. It is not the material that will fail first but the dye, which will lose its shine.

• Jean : about three years. I remind you that it should not be worn every day for such a long life. It also depends on the thickness of the canvas, the body shape of the wearer, and even the way they walk. The wear points of jeans are all different depending on the person.

• Wool sweater : it all depends on the thickness of the knit... and the moths in your closet. So at least 3 years for a fine mesh and at least five years for a large mesh.

• Jacket/blazer : if the piece is fully canvassed, the lifespan is measured in tens of years. Otherwise, four to five years for a semi-canvass.

• Suit pants : around three years should pass before you notice the wear of the material on the friction points .

• Coat : five years or more, depending on the thickness of the material.

I hope this will allow you to frame your requirements, and adapt your budget accordingly .

2. Every object has a lifespan

We must therefore accept that all clothing remains a consumable item. Simply because there is no such thing as indestructible clothing. and that nothing is immortal .

Depending on the quality we buy, we therefore find:

• Low-end consumables , which wear out quickly and quickly lose their aesthetic and functional properties (extreme example: fast fashion )

• Clothes that can last a generation , sometimes two for the very beautiful leather lenses and traditional tailoring suits... but which always give up the ghost at one point, or rather which leave their beautiful death (extreme example: the luxury craftsmanship).

Because yes, even in the best qualities, there is a moment when after its first wrinkles and its last holes, a garment fails you for good .

It's up to you to take the deceased fabric in your arms, tell him one last lullaby, and then let him sail towards the paradise of nice clothes. After all, it will have served you well all this time.