Carter Anderson is not nine feet tall. But his jeans are.
Every day for the past two-and-a-half months, Mr. Anderson, 27, a building engineer from Portland, Ore., has worn a pair of gargantuan jeans from the Canadian jeans brand Naked & Famous Denim. The jeans, with a 100-inch inseam, are about the length of a full-size alligator or a brag-worthy Christmas tree. When unfurled, their legs look like the arms of the inflatable tube men that sit outside car dealerships.
“This is kind of my hobby right now,” said Mr. Anderson, who was visiting New York this month.
He is part of the “raw denim community,” a cohort of men (and it is almost entirely men) who treat wearing jeans not just as a daily necessity, but as an act of cotton-based metamorphosis bordering on fetish. For the uninformed, “raw denim” is denim in its inkiest, unwashed form. Through wear it fades, whiskers and puckers in idiosyncratic ways.
“You start off with a blank slate basically, and, through all of the weathering, you end up with a one-of-a-kind form,” Mr. Anderson said.
Men like him take wearing jeans to extremes, such that the community has started its own Olympic-like contest: the Indigo Invitational, an online “raw denim fading competition” that is in its fifth year. Mr. Anderson purchased his elephantine jeans specifically for this contest a year and a half ago.
“They’ve been lying under my bed,” said Mr. Anderson, who custom-ordered the jeans for around $400.
For the contest, Mr. Anderson is required to wear these jeans every day (it’s an honor system) and photograph their wear progress each month. To do so, he strings up the jeans, horizontally, in his house, using some 20 clip hangers. The jeans will be judged for their wear and whiskers by a panel of denim experts next September. Prizes include (what else?) free jeans.
His thinking was: the longer the jeans, the greater the fades. And after just two months, the original inky indigo shade had given way to a lighter oxford blue. Mr. Anderson mostly wears them bunched up, so the legs look like a stack of crushed Coke cans.
What surprised Mr. Anderson, though, is that he has found a broader audience on TikTok, picking up robust interest with videos of him doing various activities in the jeans: swimming, rock climbing, golfing, visiting a trampoline park. Some of the videos have hit hundreds of thousands of views, and he has now challenged himself to explore newer, weirder activities to do in the jeans.
“Realistically, people don’t care about denim,” Mr. Anderson said. “They care about the world’s longest blank.” (He titles his videos “World’s Longest Jeans,” for shorthand, though he’s aware that he’s about 241 feet short of the Guinness World record-holder for longest jeans, which is held by a Chinese textile company.)
In an interview that has been edited and condensed for clarity, he discusses his decision to commit to the bit, his least favorite activity to do in the jeans and what he will do with them when the year is up.
Let’s start with the basics: How long did it take to put them on the first time?
Five minutes.
And what’s that time down to now?
Maybe one or two minutes. When you wear them every day, you start to understand the physics of them.
How often do you wash them?
I swam in them once and washed them once. I’ll wash them once I get back home. Dragging them around unfurled in New York is definitely a sanitation concern. I wash them inside out.
Do you wear them to work?
I work in a professional environment, so I can’t wear them to work. But I put them on every day for at least a little bit just to keep it going. I’ve got do it, man. It’s a responsibility.
Have you slept in the jeans?
I have not. I’ve thought about it.
Is there anything you won’t do in the jeans?
I’m not going to wear them to a funeral. I’m not crazy.
On TikTok, people always comment with new ideas of things for you to do in the jeans. What was your least favorite activity?
I went to a trampoline park recently, and I’m having to talk to the staff and explain that I’m not a creep as I’m, like, waiting for gaps in children to film. So, the hardest part is explaining it to people. But people like the jeans. People like a combination of novelty and familiarity. And I think this strikes that.
What’s your next activity in the jeans?
I had no plans to go indoor skydiving, but now I’m trying to get that hammered out. I’m pretty introverted — I like hanging out in my house — but this quest is getting out of my element, trying stuff I wouldn’t normally try.
When you swam in them, how did you not sink?
I had pool floaties in the legs, so there was no drowning risk.
How often do you really unfurl them and walk around?
That’s just for the videos. I was going to walk the entirety of the Brooklyn Bridge with them unfurled. But it was packed. I did not intend to be an influencer, so there’s a level of obnoxiousness that I’m just not willing to cross.
When you do wear them unfurled, aren’t you worried they’ll spring a hole? Your feet are basically scraping against the ground.
It’s all about thrashing them. I’m not worried about damaging them. I’m kind of looking forward to getting holes at some level because that will enable me to do more things. Like one thing that’s been suggested a lot is roller skating, and I can’t wear roller skates with them unfurled until there’s a hole where my feet are.
What will you do with them when this is over?
Probably hang them up in my house.
OK, the important question. Do you think you’ll win the contest?
I might not win, but the love is in the journey.
Jacob Gallagher is a Times reporter covering fashion and style.
The post His Jeans Are Gigantic. His Internet Fame Is Too. appeared first on New York Times.
