For this edition of The Antiques Clothes Show, retired member of the Oi Polloi goon squad Tom de Groot explains how his Nudie jeans got so beat up. Let’s hear it Tom…
I bought these in 2007 and more or less lived in them for the next three and a half years. The square patch on the front left pocket is the outline of a pack of Marlboro Lights, the back left pocket is where I put my wallet and the back right is for my lighter and change. After a certain point I put the numerous flyers handed to me in the streets of Manchester down the back pockets so stuff wouldn’t fall out. The Mods (editor’s note: local denim repair wizards) then did a repair job on the back and gave me some new, shortened, pockets.
Nigel offered me a job in them and Steve interviewed me in them. I wore them on the first day of the new OP shop and they accompanied me through my sofa surfing phase after graduation until I got a flat in Salford. I wore them to a festival in Poland, I took them for a dip in the Danube and they may or may not have taken on the smell of a popular plant feed. They then saw me through a move back to Yorkshire where they were finally put into retirement.
But not for long — I then took them into the Nudie store in Soho to see if they could do anything with them. The guy said it took six hours and two meters of denim to repair them. Did it all for free as well, which was pretty sound.
Anton from Nudie has asked me for them but I can’t quite bring myself to hand them over — they remind me of a time when I didn’t have to think about paying rent.