There’s a girl I know who buys new jeans quite often. Nice jeans, often dark denim. The unfortunate thing being that every time she dons a pair of new denim, she invariably ends up with smurf-blue hands and shirt hems. I despair to think about how her suede shoes would fare.

I myself just bought a new pair of rigid dark denim jeans this weekend, and thought it might be helpful to share a few tips on how you can keep your jeans looking as good as the day you bought them.

The first thing you should do when you take home a new pair of dark denim jeans, is a salt bath. Get a bucket or laundry sink filled with cold water, then pour in a cup of salt. Stir in with a wooden spoon until the salt is dissolved and the water looks cloudy. Then submerge your new jeans until any air is pushed out, and your jeans sit beneath the water without you holding them down. Leave the jeans in there for an hour. After the hour’s up, rinse the jeans, and throw them in a cold wash on their own. This will lock the colour in to a certain extent, so that they will lose less colour with each of the initial washes.

And for those of you who need a re-cap on the basics…

• Don’t wash them daily – Denim thins with every wash.
• Always wash them in a cold cycle – Warm/hot cycles mess with the elasticity, so remove deep stains with rubbing alcohol.
• Always wash them insite out – it will slow the fade in colour.
• NEVER put them in the dryer – This wears the weave and melts the elastane.
• Dry them flat, or hang them from the heels – it helps them keep their shape.

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