You might have heard of Japanese denim. There’s a great deal of reverence for the stuff and for good reason. Chilton-Faust says it’s one of the highest quality denims you can get, since they’re made on shuttle looms with ring-spun cotton yarns.”These yarns are softer, stronger and more durable, giving the fabric an authentic look with natural slubs. This denim molds to your body, and the less you wash the better it becomes.
3. Explore your fits. Jeans, like snowflakes and Haribo candy, come in a mind-melting array of seemingly-minute variations: high-rise vs. low-rise; flares vs. straight vs. taper; and so many more. So take a deep breath. Ultimately, it comes down to two things for Chilton-Faust. “The right fit in a pair of jeans can enhance comfort and confidence.” Remember that big-box brands like J.Crew and Uniqlo—and the affordable OGs like Levi’s, Lee, and Wrangler—usually offer a much wider range of sizes than their indie counterparts. (We’ll spare you a lesson on the economies of scale.) Those brands also tend to have plenty of brick-and-mortar outposts to try on different styles IRL if you’re wondering about the recent relaxed-fit revolution or find yourself high-rise-curious.
On the flip side, smaller companies experiment more, and aren’t afraid to roll out new silhouettes. “Buy them from a brand or a retailer that can give you good feedback on how they will break in, how much they will stretch, how much they might shrink on their first wash,” Chen says. He also mentions that the amount of details a brand’s website dishes out or how knowledgeable a sales associate is are good indicators.
One thing to keep in mind? Jeans should get better with age…if they’re any good. Chen keeps it simple: “The good stuff looks better the more you wear it and the bad stuff looks worse.”
How We Test and Review Products
Style is subjective, we know—that’s the fun of it. But we’re serious about helping our audience get dressed. Whether it’s the best white sneakers, the flyest affordable suits, or the need-to-know menswear drops of the week, GQ Recommends’ perspective is built on years of hands-on experience, an insider awareness of what’s in and what’s next, and a mission to find the best version of everything out there, at every price point.
Our staffers aren’t able to try on every single piece of clothing you read about on GQ.com (fashion moves fast these days), but we have an intimate knowledge of each brand’s strengths and know the hallmarks of quality clothing—from materials and sourcing, to craftsmanship, to sustainability efforts that aren’t just greenwashing. GQ Recommends heavily emphasizes our own editorial experience with those brands, how they make their clothes, and how those clothes have been reviewed by customers. Bottom line: GQ wouldn’t tell you to wear it if we wouldn’t.
How We Make These Picks
We make every effort to cast as wide of a net as possible, with an eye on identifying the best options across three key categories: quality, fit, and price.
To kick off the process, we enlist the GQ Recommends braintrust to vote on our contenders. Some of the folks involved have worked in retail, slinging clothes to the masses; others have toiled for small-batch menswear labels; all spend way too much time thinking about what hangs in their closets.
We lean on that collective experience to guide our search, culling a mix of household names, indie favorites, and the artisanal imprints on the bleeding-edge of the genre. Then we narrow down the assortment to the picks that scored the highest across quality, fit, and price.
Across the majority of our buying guides, our team boasts firsthand experience with the bulk of our selects, but a handful are totally new to us. So after several months of intense debate, we tally the votes, collate the anecdotal evidence, and emerge with a list of what we believe to be the absolute best of the category right now, from the tried-and-true stalwarts to the modern disruptors, the affordable beaters to the wildly expensive (but wildly worth-it) designer riffs.
Whatever your preferences, whatever your style, there’s bound to be a superlative version on this list for you. (Read more about GQ’s testing process here.)
