Dry denim is a gateway drug to vintage.
When I first got a whiff of the possibility, that our little vintage store could get a chance to carry Nudie Jeans, I was shaking from pure excitement. This is not only, cause Nudie is a cool brand. But cause, me and Nudie go way back, and it’s a brand that has strongly moulded me and my career. And maybe first and foremost it visualises, how I see a good brand and sustainability within the clothing industry.
My time with Nudie goes way back to secondary school, when I got my first pair of Nudie jeans. A mid blue washed Tape Ted’s, to be exact. They had a little pamphlet in their right back pocket, that told more about the jeans and how they are made and what that does to our environment. As visuals it featured some slender slouchy long haired guys in tight full denim fits and Docs, with heaps of wear and tear. Teenage me was sold.
I wore those jeans to death. But before that, those jeans and that pamphlet helped me to get a job. And not just any job, a sales assistant position at JC Company, the very same jeans store chain where one of Nudie’s founder Maria Erixon began her career with denim.
After a little while working in a jeans store, I got my first pair of dry denims. I can still remember the smell of fresh pair of drys. They were Nudie Jeans fit Grim Tim, icon in its own right, low waist, slim fit with a button fly. Yeah, different times.
Those jeans started a ripple effect. Not only did I get deep into the denim world but I also began to admire the wear and tear. That wear and tear was crucial on how I fell in love with vintage. I think it’s safe to say no garment ages like jeans. It’s like fine wine, it comes better with age. That’s why vintage clothes are so cool, they show a lot of character through the wear and tear. To me personally back in 2015 it was all about those fades, how to get the best possible honey combs and whiskers. Yeah, getting into dry denim does that to a man.
I wore those Grim Tim’s where-ever I went, from school, to work, to gigs and beyond. Those were my first ever jeans that I wore 8 months straight without a wash. And well in hindsight, I learned that it’s good for your jeans and your comrades to wash your jeans every once in a while… Not too often, but every once in while. After all of the five pockets were blown out, I got them repaired at Nudie repair store in Stockholm, free of charge. Still one of my favourite pairs ever, and I still have them, kind of. My mother used them as raw material, when she wove a denim rug for me.
Something that I’ve always found really cool in Nudie’s communication, is that instead of them showing a brand new pair of jeans in their social and catalogs, they showcase the worn-in ones. They’re honest about how their product handles the wear and tear of everyday people. Even your local vintage dealer was once featured on their insta, rocking a pair of Kaihara selvage Steady Eddies, back in 2018.
So, to me to say I’m fucking stoked, would be an understatement. We got a new brand in store: Nudie Jeans. It’s the youngest of the bunch we’ve covered in our Icons series, for sure. Founded back in 2001 in Gothenburg by Maria Erixon and Joakim Levin. Some of you may wonder if 24 years is enough to become an icon? Well, we sure as hell think so, and here is why…
Nudie’s story begins on a momentous spring day in the year 2000. Back then Maria was still working for Lee in Brussels as a design manager, when she first encountered a fabric sample that would change her life. While attending a fabric week in Brussels, she stumbled across a sample from Kaihara, located in Fukuyama, Japan. She fell in love with the fabric. Unfortunately the big guns at Lee thought that the fabric in question would be too expensive for their line. That was enough for Maria, and she resigned. There was three main reasons why she resigned, first because she hated the traffic, secondly because she didn’t like the quality of the product she was working with and then the last drop was when she couldn’t use the Kaihara fabric.
In 2001 Maria moved back to Gothenburg with her cherished souvenir of Kaihara fabric sample. She wanted to use that fabric in her creations. So, together with punk drummer Joakim Levin, her partner at the time, they started Nudie Jeans. Marias goal was to build a company, work less and to start a family. Quite an odd mix. She wanted to have an office in the downtown and be able to walk or cycle to work instead of sitting hours in traffic. She wanted to be independent and have kids in Sweden.
Nudie jeans was established in 2001 without a strategy or written plan. The only goal was to enjoy doing what ever they were doing and be independent. No suit wearing shareholders to answer to. Since day one, Nudie wanted to stay clear of external interferences, that would make them compromise. They didn't look for any outside inspirations, instead they created something that they wanted. Which in 2001, was 1000 pairs of 5 pocket jeans made with Kaihara selvage fabric. Once during the early days of Nudie, a distributor tried to get them to get bigger by getting more investment and expand further. Maria was outraged. She got him a tee that said: ’Start your own fucking brand’. Getting super rich has never been Nudie’s driving force.
"Every pair of jeans we make is designed to be your 'forever jeans.' They're the kind you'll want to repair, not replace. The kind you'll hand down to your kids, who'll hand them down to theirs. We're not just making clothes; we're creating future classics. Clothes that become vintage, instead of garbage." -Maria Erixon
Like in most cases, us included, nothing goes smoothly in the beginning. One of Nudies’s cuts in their first collection was botched in production. But that disaster got quite a silver lining after it was sold out at the first fair they were displayed to buyers. That disastrous fit ended on becoming the Nudie look. The fit in question had an anti-fit crotch which was something that guys liked at the time.
Free of outside pressure, Nudie could be stubborn about their quality and ethics since day one. They didn’t care for big marketing gimmicks, instead they relied on good old word-of-mouth. Something that we are also big advocates for. And instead of using professional models in their shoots they have used their friends in their campaigns ever since they started.
They're pioneers in making the most sustainable denim in the world. Since they started back in 2001 environmental awareness and human rights have been Nudies’ core values. Long before sustainability became the buzzword it’s today. Nudie has quite impressive ecological credentials. Since 2012 all of their cotton products are made 100% organic cotton. They offer free repair service in their stores to ensure a longer lifespan for their jeans, and if you hand in your pre-loved jeans you get 20% off a new pair. Those pre-loved jeans are then cleaned, mended and resold as Re-use denim. On top of Nudies circular denim chain, they have one of the most transparent manufacturing structure within the clothing industry.
Like BSM, with Nudie, a lot of their creative sparks come down to music, which is inherent to the brand like their trademark orange thread. Nudie is a company whose staff and part of their founders are nearly all ’failed musicians’. Joakim for instance, used to play in punk bands and is a co-owner of Pustervik, one of the Gothenburg’s biggest and coolest music venues.
Folks at Nudie believe that it’s important to be totally open about how they create their products. They want to know exactly where your favourite garms come from and how they’re made. By knowing what happens every step of the way, from cotton fields to the packaging area, they can improve the conditions in their supply chain. Those transparent and healthy relationships throughout their supply chain, enables them to share info about CO2 emissions, water usage and all the suppliers involved in the process. If you’re eager to know more, through their site you can find their latest sustainability report. Nudie Jeans have been awarded multiple times over the years for their efforts towards more sustainable and transparent clothing industry.
Fast forward to 2025 and Nudie has grown a whole lot and offers a full-fledged clothing line, everything from outerwear to underwear and even some furniture. It's still owned by the two very same people who have a clear focus on continuing to make awesome products while leading the denim world in the sustainability field in their process.
We at BSM share a lot of the same values, and those values drove me personally into vintage biz. Yeah, dry denim is a gateway drug to vintage. The goal to buy better stuff and own them for a long time, outlast all the trends, maybe even hand them to your kids someday. Wear your clothes and let the wear and tear tell the story. Make the clothes your own, instead of just wearing a piece of clothing. Take good care of your clothes and mend them if needed. That is something that resonated strongly with me as a teenager and still does in my late twenties. After over 10 years since my first encounter with Nudie Jeans I still have most of the stuff in my everyday wardrobe. That alone tells a lot about a brand. As Nudie’s slogan goes ’create tomorrow’s vintage’, which is a statement that rings true. Tomorrow’s vintage jeans by Nudie Jeans now available at your local vintage store.
Great story! Interesting and educational…