Raw denim

What it is

Most denim you buy has been washed, and often stone-washed or treated, before it was ever cut. Raw denim has not. It is dyed, woven, sometimes stiffened with a starch-like finish, and that is it. It arrives dark, flat and stiff, and everything that happens to it after that happens to you.

Within raw there is one distinction that matters more than any other:

• Sanforized cloth has been mechanically pre-shrunk at the mill. It will still shrink a little on the first wash — usually a couple of percent — but not dramatically.
• Unsanforized (loom-state) cloth has not. It can lose several percent in length and some in width on the first wash, and it does not shrink evenly in both directions.

Both are raw. The word alone does not tell you which you have.

Why use it

Raw cloth starts as a blank. Every crease, fade and soft spot comes from the wearer, so two pairs from the same bolt end up different. It is also the most honest way to work with a cloth: nothing about its behaviour is hidden by a factory wash.

The cost is that it makes the workshop's job harder. A pattern for raw cloth has to account for shrinkage, and a finished measurement is only meaningful after a wash. That is part of why the jean is still being tuned — see Why a prototype's fit changes.

What the workshop does about shrinkage

Each denim's material page says whether it is sanforized where that is known. When it is not known, the cloth is treated as if it will shrink: a sample is washed and measured before the pattern is trusted, and a garment is washed before its finished measurements are taken. The mechanics are under Shrinkage and relaxation.

How it wears

Stiff, then not. A raw jean is uncomfortable for a week or two and then becomes yours. It relaxes at the waist and thigh with wear and tightens again after a wash. Where it creases and rubs it fades — differently for indigo and for black, which is its own page: Fading and black denim. When and how to wash it is under Washing denim.