Do your jeans have a soul?

Do your jeans have a soul?

“At once esoteric – with a sacred status among denim heads – the humble jean remains one of the most deceptively complex and mysterious garments of all time; one that can create an emotional connection with the wearer.”

- Katya Foreman, BBC Culture

And yes, for denim heads certainly, as a figure of speech they do – your jeans have a soul.

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“It’s a very personal thing because of the uniqueness of the dyeing… as you start to wear in your jeans they kind of take on their own personality …

“each wear pattern is unique to the individual. It’s something that you wear over time and that moulds to your body and takes on character,” says Kara Nicholas, of Cone Denim.

Cone’s White Oak mill in Greensboro, North Carolina, until it’s closure in 2017 boasted a collection of vintage American Draper X3 model shuttle looms from the 1940s.

“There is a depth and dimension that happens with those looms,” says Kara,

“when people started collecting vintage jeans, there was this idea of trying to emulate or replicate that authenticity [from the ‘70s].”

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“It’s this idea that jeans have a soul, that they become a part of you, as the way they wear is unique to each person” says Enrique Silla, CEO of Jeanologia (market leader in sustainable technologies related to the manufacture and finishing of jeans)

“When we go to the denim store, subconsciously we are looking for something similar to our favourite old pair of jeans.”

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And indeed, with the industry-wide reversion to vintage inspired denim- to the type of denim that was produced in the 1970s, with washes and distressing to mimic the look of your favourite pair of old jeans - this idea of jeans ‘having a soul’, with respect to the way they evolve when worn over time as if a living thing, becomes ever present in denim-head circles, and then the consumer.

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On the other hand I’d like to propose to reconsider that idea, as if almost if not indeed literally, and take it a step further.

Could it be that, given denim’s unique and exceptional behavioural traits (as compared to all other clothing), that our jeans actually and truly do have something more going on, such as in a soul, as in we do?

Especially when it comes to denim of the old-school, rich textural family that’s invested with its groove like grain and grainy slubs (those accidental but prized imperfections) – the type of denim that, as well as the rest, is particularly valued for the way it ripens and matures with age, taking on an imprint of the wearer’s gait, movement, and lifestyle - nurturing its own bespoke, unique fades, engaging in an ongoing dialogue with the life of its wearer.

That type of denim as it takes on the patina of its surroundings (and wearer’s lifestyle), starts to emulate the behaviour of a living being– like of a plant say- such as a Trumpet vine that as it grows entwines itself into and around the crevices of the garden wall, its growth in real time imperceptible to the naked eye – due to its speed (slow and gradual), more obvious after sufficient elapses of time.

So, how can we be sure the same type of thing isn’t happening with our jeans?

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So, is it possible your jeans truly have a soul?

- As some denim heads indeed might have us believe.

Can non-living, inanimate things have a soul?

But then again, do WE have a soul?

Even in the case where – as some people believe – we were nothing more than biological computers – would we still then have a soul?

And do animals, for example the most evil and unfriendly ones, the great white shark, or the man-eating lion, or the wasp with the sharp sting, or the house fly that lives for literally no more than 15 days, or the mite existing for literally no more than 72 hours, do these things have souls?

And do our PETS- pet hamsters, budgerigars, pet tortoises, dogs, cats and the rest- do they have souls?

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On say the worst-case assumption that WE (and our pets, and other animals, insects etc.) are essentially biological computers and nothing more, not possessed of any ‘higher power’ type of soul entity at all, that which we call our ‘soul’ would be nothing more than a very complex electronic matrix going on in the brain (call it an algorithm, or AI if you like).

And that complex electronic matrix, or algorithm or AI, would be the thing that defines us, with respect to our sense of a soul, also defining our personality, and constantly adapting, being modified, evolving with experience.

In which case the more complex our denim, and the greater the responsiveness of our denim to us, our movements, to external stimuli, the greater the sense in which our jeans, like us, have a ‘soul’.

Or—— are we missing something here? A bit too rash in making that bold parallel—- between us and our denim?

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Even if we agree we are just biological computers, thoughts are not just electrical activity inside the brain, and emotions not just chemicals. Thoughts and emotions are what your mind experiences as a result of electrical and chemical activity inside your brain.

- Or to put it in another way, thoughts and emotions are events or states prevailing in a fantastically complicated and elaborate system called the brain, with contributions from other parts of the body including glands.

And it’s thoughts and emotions that – if we deny the ‘higher power’ idea of a ‘soul’ – give rise to what we consider to be our soul.

Or, looking at it another way, the ‘soul’ is something attributed to the very complex bag of molecules and electrical and chemical activity that ‘we’ are made up of and that gives rise to our thoughts and emotions, and if we didn’t have any thoughts or emotions then neither would we have souls.

So, in that our jeans don’t have thoughts or emotions, then surely they can’t be having a ‘soul’ like we do (other than as a figure of speech)?

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But hold on. Again—— is that right?

That in order to have a soul you need thoughts and emotions?

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Now take plants, for example.

Do plants – trees, shrubs etc- have souls?

Certainly they are living, animate, beings (and that holds even if they aren’t infused with that higher power life-giving life-force, meaning we consider them to be alive irrespective of our spiritual views on the case).

But do plants have thoughts or emotions?

And if we agree that plants don’t have thoughts or emotions, that they are essentially physical as opposed to cerebral beings – having evolved so as to behave in given physical ways given a given set of stimuli (apologies for the repeated ‘given’s) - does that mean that they don’t have souls?

Because I think we do consider plants to have souls. Even if we’re sceptical about whether they actually have feelings, or thoughts.

Why else would we be so upset – in the feeling sorry for them sense- when beautiful or otherwise plants, shrubs or trees are felled, or not protected, left to die? Unlike buildings or statues they are considered alive, and while we’re reluctant to attribute them feelings as such, there is a sense in which they still truly have ‘souls’.

There is also a sense in which they still potentially ‘feel’ without having cognitive thoughts and emotions as such, and that’s another possibility worth factoring in.

But yes, even if we agree they can’t ‘feel’, by virtue of the fact that they’re living, animate beings they are, yes, considered by us to have souls.

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In which case as for our jeans, and whether they have souls, the question follows – could it possibly be that our jeans, like plants, are actually alive?

And if not, does that then exclude them having souls, other than as a figure of speech?

For example, your jeans ARE composed of what is most likely ‘dead’ plant matter (the cotton). In which case your favourite pair of old jeans, given that it doesn’t have thoughts or emotions, and neither is it alive, even though it exhibit traits of something that IS alive (evolving and changing with time and wear), would surely be precluded from having ‘a soul’.

On the other hand, it could still, by virtue of its complex behaviour, be properly maintained as – such as in the case of a fine piece of music, or a good story - having ‘soul’, as opposed to ‘a soul’. And maybe that’s what we should be saying when we say that our jeans have a soul, i.e. that our jeans have ‘soul’.

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Unless of course the picked, milled, spun, dyed and woven cotton (or cotton/rayon mix, rayon also being a plant-based ingredient often used in denim) is by some curious act of fate and fact of science still ‘alive’ – in which case your jeans most likely do have a soul – both figuratively (by virtue of the traits they exhibit, of adapting and evolving with age and wear, traits such as then go on to create that special emotional connection with the wearer), and also literally, as in connected to the live and living plant matter they’re mostly made up of.

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That aside, lets also take a look at what makes some jeans more soulful than others- in the sense of having ‘soul’, or having ‘a soul’ but figuratively as opposed to literally speaking- in other words, let’s discover a little more about those things that help create that precious sense of our jeans having a soul.