Big in Indonesia
As an Instagram junkie, I’ve seen thousands of faded jeans coming by. Faded jeans from classic American brands, famous Japanese brands and from smaller upcoming brands. My daily morning routine; Get out of bed, grab a cup of coffee and, while enjoying a cigarette (I still have to quit smoking) I scroll through all the new updates with #rawdenim, #selvedge and #fadefriday. One of the things that strikes me regularly are the impressive, high contrast faded jeans from Indonesian denim brands. Day in and day out, fades from Indonesia keep attracting my attention, and help me to get through the rough morning.
High humidity in combination with the high temperatures are the main reasons for these well-faded jeans. But it wouldn’t be fair to ignore the hardcore Indonesian denim spirit because, you have to be a real denim hero to wear a 24 oz. jeans with a temperature of 30 degrees or even higher.
There are so many denim brands from Indonesia that are worth looking into, but to avoid an article with a 6 hour reading time we’ve limited ourselves to the following brands; Oldblue Co, Aye! Denim, Sage, Mischief Denim.
Oldblue Co.
Established in 2010, Oldblue Co. is now one for the largest denim brands in Indonesia. Inspired by the working class and the blue-collar workers and formed on passion, Oldblue provides; shirts, tees, leather goods and a wide variety of jeans. Oldblue doesn’t work with denim from a specific country, they select their fabric only by its quality. Whether you are looking for a 14 oz. cone mills jeans, a jeans made form 20 oz. Japanese fabric or an 25 oz. Indonesian jeans, you can find it at Oldblue Co. Check their current collection here.
Aye! Denim
Aye! Denim originated in Jakarta and was created to bring high quality jeans from Indonesia to the global stage. Started in 2011 and already over 100K followers on Instagram, we can say that Aye! is booming. Aye offers a wide collection of jeans, from light weight to heavy weight denim and from washed to unwashed. All the jeans from Aye, are handmade and made from local Indonesian denim. Read more on their website.
Sage
‘Who lives sees, who travels sees more’, this slogan discloses the source of inspiration at Sage. Inspired by the beautiful nature, Sage was founded in 2012 as manufacturer of fine crafted apparel. Sage is specialized in heavy weight denim. Where most brands are offering one or two heavy weight jeans in every collection, the jeans of Sage are starting from 15 oz.. Their heaviest denim at the moment is the 25 oz. Everbeast that comes at a price of $145. Find out more on their website.
Mischief Denim
Mischief represents the hustle hard attitude of Indonesian urban culture and was founded in 2006. There is no fancy recipe behind Mischief Denim, they are just offering high quality denim that is made by experienced craftsman. Mischief works with three different collections, namely: The Iron Label, Premium grade and Mischief Mayhem. For their jeans form the Iron Label, Mischief only uses heavy weight selvedge denim. Find out more about the Iron Label on their website.