My Shrink to Fit Levis Experiment

A while back I read an article that inspired me to try something I've always wanted to try: shrinking Levis to fit me right.

It's harder than you'd think and I've never had a good experience buying some, washing them, and hoping they fit. But I've always wanted a good manly pair of Levis that aged gracefully, even if I can't.

Thanks to Primer Magazine's Andrew Snavely, I now own a great fitting pair of classic Levis 501s. You can read how to do it perfectly here. The purpose of this post is mostly to confirm the validity of the in-depth post written by Mr. Snavely.

Basically, you need to order them an inch bigger in the waist and 3" longer in the inseam. Once I got mine, I tried them on. They looked like the photo below. Obviously, they're meant to shrink so they were huge on me.

Next, I filled our tub with enough hot water to fully immerse the denim. (I can't find that picture.) Then, I turned them inside out–to preserve as much as the blue as possible–and dunked, soaking them for 1 hour. There was a lot of dye run-off after this but it didn't harm the tub.

 

Once I drained the tub, I hung them on the shower head (pictured above) and let them drip until they stopped dripping.

 Then I put them between a large towel and walked on them for about 5 minutes to soak up most of the water in them. Then I turned them right side out and did the same thing.

The hardest part for me was the final step: wearing them damp until dry. It's the middle of winter and it was chilly. However, this is one of the most important steps, according to Snavely, because the wet jeans will be "using your body as a guide" and prevent over-shrinking. Here is the result:

I believe it was a success. I really like them. I think they will last a long time and they only cost me $30 or something. What do you think? Is it worth the effort for you (or your significant other) to get a really good fitting pair of Levis? Has anyone else tried this method? I'd love to read your comments.