Selvedge Denim

Real selvedge denim is decided long before it's cut — in the cotton, the yarn and the loom. Ours is woven slowly in Kojima, Japan's denim capital, by Collect (the fabric arm of Japan Blue) on traditional hand-powered shuttle looms. Those looms leave a tightly woven band down each edge — the selvedge, or "self-edge" — that stops the cloth fraying, ravelling and curling, and marks denim made the traditional way. We make it in two weights: a 13oz spun from organic Turkish cotton, with slub yarn that gives the vertical "tate-ochi" fading prized in vintage denim; and a heavier 14oz woven on the Toyoda G3 — Japan's oldest shuttle loom still in use — from organic Argentine and premium American cotton, pure-indigo rope-dyed and given a single low-temperature one-wash. The fabric is woven exclusively for Archibald.

Most modern denim is woven thin and fast on machines built for volume; this is the opposite. Collect's yarn-to-finish control — hand-selected long-staple cotton, deliberately uneven yarn, revived vintage looms and careful finishing — is what lets a pair of our jeans be unmistakably vintage in character yet dependable in quality, and only get better with age. The 13oz gives soft vertical fades; the 14oz is the ideal middle ground, heavy enough to fade dramatically but comfortable enough to wear every day.