Junya Watanabe Black Denim Bell-Bottom Jeans

Nobody designs a pocket bag. It is the plainest cloth in a jean, its entire job is to be strong and out of sight, and almost every pair ever made has one cut from an undistinguished cotton that nobody has looked at on purpose. Making it white, and saying so, moves the least considered part of the garment into the description of what the garment is. That is a small thing, and it is also the tell: a maker who has decided what color the inside of a pocket should be has decided about everything else too. The cut is the other half of it. A bell-bottom is measured from the knee, close above it and opening below, which is a different shape from a wide leg that is wide from the hip down, and it is the one that was built to sit over a shoe rather than to swallow one. Low at the waist, so the whole line starts lower than a jean normally starts.

We look for the decision a maker did not have to make. On a jean that is almost never the fit, and it is very often something like a pocket bag.

Junya Watanabe designs under his own name inside Comme des Garçons, and denim has been one of his long subjects rather than an occasional visit to one.

Ninety-five percent cotton and five percent polyurethane. Made in Japan. Bell-bottom cut with a low rise, and a white pocket lining. Color: black denim.

A low rise sits below the natural waist, so this is sized on the hip rather than the waist and the rise is the measurement to think about before the leg is. Five percent polyurethane in a denim gives the cloth enough give to move with a body and enough recovery to come back overnight, which is what keeps a low-rise jean where it was put as the day goes on. The bell opens from the knee, so the hem travels: it wants some height at the heel, or a length that stops short of the floor.

With the Silver Sequin Top or the White Drapy Top, where the jean is the plain half and is meant to be. Under the Junya Watanabe Leather Patchwork Jacket. Black denim sits next to black without matching it, and the small difference between the two blacks is the reason to wear them together rather than a reason not to.

Black denim loses its color to heat, to sunlight, and to agitation, in roughly that order, so wash it cold, inside out, and as seldom as the wearing allows. The polyurethane makes a dryer a worse idea than usual, since heat is what ends a stretch fiber and a jean that has lost its recovery does not get it back. Our care guidance covers denim in more detail.

The Low Rise Jeans is cut low and flared at the hem in an indigo stone wash, and the x Levi’s Denim Jeans with Pleated Inserts is the wide trouser with polyester panels set into the leg. Junya Watanabe has his own account of the house on the Comme des Garçons designer page.