Top tips for jeans wearers

Today I'm wearing a new pair of jeans. Actually I've been wearing them for exactly seven days now, almost a week.

Whilst doing a bit of photocopying I happened to glance down, at a leg of mine, and I thought

"mmm (not in a sexy way), the new jeans have started to hang properly."

Now I'm quite into my denims. I'm not one of those chaps who goes out and buys super trendy baggy ones that don't have an arse on them and hang around my ankles, but I like jeans and try to buy decent fitting, staying away from Tesco's "value" ones and similar generic tat. So it will come as a shock to you to learn that it was only last year when this particular lightbulb in my head actually got switched on..

Like a flash of inspiration, an explosion of revelation and a surprise thing that takes you by surprise I realised that jeans need to be worn in.

It's one thing to go and buy a shirt or a decent suit. You can go home and wear them to work the next day and they'll never look better, providing you iron the shirt first. There's nothing worse than seeing one of these pillocks wearing a brand new shirt straight out of the packet. The fold lines are as visible as Britney's vajayjay on an decent night out, but the shirt will be a damn sight easier to get into.

Jeans are a different animal altogether. I used to get a new pair of jeans and often give up on them after a day or two, thinking that they looked crap. The fact is that jeans need at least a week of wear to even begin to hang properly. I believe that denim afficionados advocate that jeans should only be washed once in every 3.1415927 years. That's a bit extreme for my taste, but I like the way they're thinking.

It's just not good to wear a pair for a day or two, then wash them, then go through the process all over again. Wear them for a week or two, you can take them off at night if you must, let the rigidness go, let the big flappy straight bits of leg begin to hang as if they were made around you, let them soften up a bit, let the legs drag on the ground for a while and be proud.

Then, and only then, once you've been through this breaking in period, wear them and enjoy the feeling. Put them in your wardrobe without washing them and leave them there, to fester nicely, until the next time you want to wear them. If you are like me and are a fan of the button fly then you may have to let this wear in too. Button flys are a cool thing to have on jeans. They look better than the run of the mill zip and a pair of jeans with the adornment of a button fly always feels just that bit more "designer".

The downside is that button fly jeans need to soften up a bit around the willy area before the fly can be opened and closed with ease. Most blokes know that awkward feeling when you're stuck in a public toilet desperately trying to do up the very bottom button and the button is just too tight a fit to go in easily. It's the dilemna of whether you persevere, taking the chance that other men may think your actually playing with yourself, or leave whilst flying at half mast. My preferred course of action is to persevere and mutter something like

"fucking button flys - ha".

But, persevere at your own risk if there's a queue of blokes waiting for your urinal. Or if you spot a bloke behind you singing "Careless whisper" and looking rather excited.

The best solution is to let button flys get worn in and softened up properly before you encounter a social situation that may require the use of a public toilet. I expect chaps who are hung like the proverbial horse don't have the problem. Presumably the sheer force caused by the large male bratwurst is enough to loosen the fly anyway. For fellows like me, hung like a mosquito, it's a different matter. We could always buy normal zipped fly jeans but that would be simply mad, tantamount to buying shoes because they are comfortable.

One more thing; if you're a lover of Levi 501s please make sure you buy a size up from your usual fit. It's so important, unless you want to look like Nick Heyward going down to the lake I fear. Oh, and just one more thing; for the love of anything or anyone NEVER wear jeans with a crease ironed in them. That's just silly.