wash your jeans?

[Seb Lucas]

same question about how often you should condition your leather jacket

how come some claim leather jacket that you wear and being exposed to the elements and salinity of our own sweat never need conditioning because museum piece that stay on a bust in controlled environment doesn't need conditioning.

The leather doesn't absorb anything, its saturated in waxes and oils and virtually impervious.

It's the lining that traps smells and dirt. I wash my jackets every decade or give the lining a sponge bath and dry in gentle sun.

 

[HoosierDaddy]

same question about how often you should condition your leather jacket

how come some claim leather jacket that you wear and being exposed to the elements and salinity of our own sweat never need conditioning because museum piece that stay on a bust in controlled environment doesn't need conditioning.

Seems you live in a climate where it is usually humid and sweaty. What is the purpose of wearing a leather jacket in those conditions? Many/most of us only wear leather when it is chilly to cold weather, so sweating isn't such an issue. Conditioner is only used when/if the leather becomes dry after years of wear. I have never washed a leather jacket but have never worn one much over 55 degrees.
HD

 

[Ernest P Shackleton]

Speaking of jeans, or items of direct body contact, a leather jacket is a different ballgame to pants. 1) very little direct body contact in a jacket. with a jacket, people do clean the collar and cuff areas, and if a dresser tends to wear collared longsleeves underneath jackets, obviously even less direct body exposure. 2) as for non-body contact, a pant is exposed to seat grime, shoe gunk, street grime, wallet nastiness, splashing off the pavement in the rain, etc. More, and different, exposure to our lower half. Cuffs and elbows are limited exposure areas in jackets, generally speaking.

 

[navetsea]

I wash my jeans and condition my jacket monthly
that's how I roll

 

[Seb Lucas]

Seems you live in a climate where it is usually humid and sweaty. What is the purpose of wearing a leather jacket in those conditions? Many/most of us only wear leather when it is chilly to cold weather, so sweating isn't such an issue. Conditioner is only used when/if the leather becomes dry after years of wear. I have never washed a leather jacket but have never worn one much over 55 degrees.
HD

You don't wear leather over 55 or 12 degrees (our scale) - that's interesting.

I'd wear leather jackets on days between 55 to 70 degrees, which for us is winter. Mind you we have pretty serious wind chill, even when it gets to 70 degrees.

I used to get through winters here in just a shirt and suit coat or denim jacket. Don't know how I grew so soft...

 

[zebedee]

I lived in the hot-ish parts of the Far East that still had winters (GZ/HK/TW/Shanghai) that were properly noticeable for two decades. After a few years, your body acclimatises and a) 22 degrees celsius doesn't feel all that hot and b) anything under 17 degrees celsius starts to require a jacket. If I get down to 10 degrees celsius I am cold. The upside of this is that I can bowl about in 32 degrees celsius without suffering and sleep in that temperature quite soundly. Shanghai winters were an absolute killer and my first winter back in the UK a few months back had me planning to get back out Asia-ways and I started to select where I'd work. As a teenager, I felt that wind and rain were melancholy and cool, but now I just think they suck. It's what you get used to. In HK, for example, you could probably wear a fairly thick jacket for about eight or nine weeks of the year if you'd 'localised'.

I used to think that not being able to stand a cold season was pretty weak, but now I understand exactly how people from warm climates feel in colder weather (the kind of weather I used to like). Whenever I'm in the UK in cold weather, it's 'fun' for about three days.

 

[navetsea]

I can wear jacket comfortably up to 27C, but neck skin is different matter, the sun is almost straight up and even when it is not that hot might sweat a little on the head and neck due to sun exposure, probably I need gloves and ear muff at 10C, 20-24 is my most comfortable range

 

[Big J]

zebedee has said it all.
When I first got to Japan, it was the start of an October, and I used to wander round in shorts and a t-shirt at night sweating.
Now I wear a jacket and jeans and feel fine, and that's despite 20 years of increasing temperatures.
Last month I was wearing jeans and a nylon flight jacket. There were Japanese people wearing down puffer jackets, and western tourists in t-shirts and shorts (I was shaking my head at both groups!).
I spent one whole summer without aircon about 15 years ago, it was 39C in the day and about 32 at night. I wouldn't want to do it again, but I could live with it.
I think there must be some acclimatization, some psychological thing going on too, and I think that maybe the Japanese are just physiologically better adapted to the heat than I am (but I'm not that kind of doctor, so don't quote me on it).
One of the reasons I moved out of the city to live in the mountains was because I missed snow. I was in Singapore the other day, and whilst I can do without minus 13C and such, I do 'need' to feel proper seasons and not a literal endless summer.
I've heard that moving to L.A. messes with your sense of time like that.

 

[zebedee]

zebedee has said it all.
When I first got to Japan, it was the start of an October, and I used to wander round in shorts and a t-shirt at night sweating.
Now I wear a jacket and jeans and feel fine, and that's despite 20 years of increasing temperatures.
Last month I was wearing jeans and a nylon flight jacket. There were Japanese people wearing down puffer jackets, and western tourists in t-shirts and shorts (I was shaking my head at both groups!).
I spent one whole summer without aircon about 15 years ago, it was 39C in the day and about 32 at night. I wouldn't want to do it again, but I could live with it.
I think there must be some acclimatization, some psychological thing going on too, and I think that maybe the Japanese are just physiologically better adapted to the heat than I am (but I'm not that kind of doctor, so don't quote me on it).
One of the reasons I moved out of the city to live in the mountains was because I missed snow. I was in Singapore the other day, and whilst I can do without minus 13C and such, I do 'need' to feel proper seasons and not a literal endless summer.
I've heard that moving to L.A. messes with your sense of time like that.

Reading JG Ballard helps. I remember a kind of timelessness in 36 degree c heat that made time feel like one long, immortal day. A good buddy of mine would really miss seasons as they marked the passage of time- HK's weather, I am sure, contributed to the expat scene of guys who were behaviourally fairly ageless, which seemed to me to be both fun and unhealthy at the same time. It is probably that odd cocktail that kept - and keeps - me hooked on Asia and is second only to my draw to teach. There's a surreality to heat and humidity that enables living there to become an odd self-spectator sport. I almost picked Singapore as a destination for the coming three years but prefer to have some kind of seasonal change. If I could find somewhere in Asia where it was late summer/early autumn all the time, the closest I'd get to coming home would be the airport bar. Outgoing families of the students I teach would see me, perfectly happy, near the departure lounge with a pint. Their kids would say: 'Look, there's James- he's quite happy here, mulling over a ticket, but he's not actually going home.'

 

[rocketeer]

In England back in the early 1990s I found a shop selling Made in USA 501 'shrink to fit' Levi's(XX?). All the oldsters out there told me that they would get in the bath wearing them. Me, I ignored there advice and bought 33waist when I took a 32, chucked them in the bath without me in them with some warm but not hot water. Yes inside out, they fitted perfect once dried out, the biggest problem was the blue dye in the bath, but that's another story.
The jeans lasted ages until the crotch wore through but unfortunately we could no longer get USA made anymore. Are Shrink to fit's still made and are they available in the UK? I have asked in most local Levi's shops but I have not found a shop that stocks them yet. Any ideas chaps and chapess's?

 

[Dav]

Aero sell them, I bought a pair, but unfortunately they shrank to fit someone else.

 

[Mich486]

Levi’s 501 shrink-to-fit aren’t sold in Europe. You can buy them online on eBay from the US.

The LVC 501 (that Aero sells) are shrink-to/fit in their rigid wash. These can be found in Europe too but of course aren’t $50 like the standard line.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Dav]

Ah, different then, I didn't realise that. I suppose the price should have been an indication.

 

[Mich486]

It’s a pity really as IMHO the regular 501 shrink to fit (501-0000) are very good value for money at the US retail price and the fit just works for me, a slim straight mid-rise with a subtle taper (at least in the current iteration). Plus they are meant to be the original jeans!

On eBay you can buy them from the US but the postage + customs charges now don’t make them all that much of a good value in Europe.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Big J]

@zebedee,
I'm worried about derailing this thread, but yes, your comments are spot on; many westerners who come to Asia seem to lose their sense of time, and maintain a style that was popular when they left their country of origin, and continue wearing it everyday for 20 years or so. Alternatively there are those who change their style in keeping with the latest trends back home, but seem oblivious to the fact that they have aged; 40 year old men dressing like they're 20- skinny jeans and deeeep v-neck T-shirts.
The Lounge probably needs an Expats in Asia thread; we can make J.G. Ballard out patron saint.

 

[Seb Lucas]

I don't generally read fiction (unless you count newspapers) - what's the Ballard reference?

 

[rocketeer]

Hell J, I don't think I dress like a teenager. As a 60 year old if I had ripped out knees in my jeans at least I would have earned them haha

 

[Big J]

@rocketeer, there's absolutely nothing wrong with growing old disgracefully (coz if there is, I'm screwed), but I think that zebedee was saying something about how when you separate people from their culture, they kind of get stuck in a time warp emotionally, and I was thinking that in addition to that, they kind of start looking like 'living history' or they fail to develop their own sense of style as a mature man. I think most of us older guys here have a pretty good sense of what our own 'style' is, and don't need the chainstores to tell us every season.
Ripped out jeans are cool! That's who you really are, it's not a costume you put on for Saturday nights.

 

[Big J]

@Seb Lucas, I haven't read everything by Ballard, but he's written about the 'peculiarities' of life as a white anglophone in Asia, and the unreliability of your own perceived experience. And (of course) he was born and grew up here in Asia during the Golden Era.
Although, now I think about it, a challenger appears! Perhaps Kipling should be a contender for Patron Saint of Loungers in Asia?
I was in the Long Bar at Raffles Hotel in Singapore this afternoon. I thoroughly recommend it to any who want a whiff of Golden Era Asia.

 

[Seb Lucas]

@Seb Lucas, I haven't read everything by Ballard, but he's written about the 'peculiarities' of life as a white anglophone in Asia, and the unreliability of your own perceived experience. And (of course) he was born and grew up here in Asia during the Golden Era.
Although, now I think about it, a challenger appears! Perhaps Kipling should be a contender for Patron Saint of Loungers in Asia?
I was in the Long Bar at Raffles Hotel in Singapore this afternoon. I thoroughly recommend it to any who want a whiff of Golden Era Asia.

If we're looking for literary tales of dissipation and crumbling hubristic dreams of colonisation, I say Graham Greene - but it's a bit of a cliché.