True Grit , Or How
Sights Denim Makes
Money in Dirty Jeans
--As Fashion Goes Grungier,
The Company Has a Blast;
Ah, Grease-Monkey Chic
By Rebecca Quick
10/12/1999
The Wall Street Journal
Page A1
(Copyright (c) 1999, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)
HENDERSON, Ky. -- Tim Hazel, a 23-year-old with bleached-blond hair, a goatee
and five earrings lining his left ear, gazes thoughtfully at a pair of brand new blue
jeans. Then he gets down to work, savagely grinding sandpaper across the thighs
and knees.
With swift strokes, he creates "whiskers" (crease lines near the crotch), "crumples"
(three-dimensional whiskers, usually added at the back of the knee) and tears up the
hems, waist and fly. By the time he's done, the pants look like they've been worn by
an urban skateboarder who spends most of his time skidding in his jeans across the
concrete jungle.
Mr. Hazel's boss takes this in approvingly. "Tim's about the best person in the world
at making a pair of jeans look worn," says Bart Sights, president of Sights Denim
Systems Inc., which is paid by the nation's largest jean manufacturers to take
perfectly good blue jeans and beat them up. "It's really an art form."
And an art form in high demand these days. Grunge is hardly a newcomer to fashion
circles -- faded and stonewashed jeans have been around for more than a decade.
But lately, the fashion world's taste in denim has gone true grit , favoring jeans that
are frayed, ripped, beat up and downright dirty.
Designer Calvin Klein made a splash during the New York fashion shows last
month by announcing that dirty denim -- faux-stained oily and tinted jeans that look
like they might have been thrown away by an auto mechanic -- would play a major
role in his spring line. Now, manufacturers and retailers such as Levi Strauss & Co.,
Lee Co. and Tommy Hilfiger all are gearing up with their own variations of dirty
denim for the new millennium.
"We have a major thrust planned for 2000 -- we're talking millions of units," says
Kent Pech, vice president of consumer marketing at VF Corp.'s Lee unit. Last month
Lee started selling a brand called Busted, a heavily worn denim with lots of
abrasions on the hems and pockets, in stores such as Kohl's and J.C. Penney. But
that is just the precursor for a brand Lee is launching in the first quarter of next year:
Metro Denim, which will boast a dirty tint and grease stains.
The kicker: Manufacturers are betting that consumers will pay a premium for jeans
the Salvation Army would reject. Calvin Klein's dirty jeans, for example, will sell
for as high as $78 retail, more than $20 above the price for the basic, unblemished
Calvin Klein jeans.
For Sights Denim, this niche is among the dirty little secrets to its success. The
company opened its doors in 1987, when Bart Sights, now 35, was graduating from
college and looking for a job. Friends who ran an industrial laundry told him they
were loading up their huge washing machines with pumice stone at night and
running loads of jeans through them for manufacturers promoting a hot new look
called "stonewashed." Mr. Sights, whose father and uncle owned an industrial
laundry, smelled an opportunity.
His father, Dale, now Sights Denim's chief executive officer, plunked down about
$10,000 for a truckload of pumice, and Bart cleaned out an old warehouse that had a
big industrial washer and dryer left in it. At first, business came in dribs and drabs;
then, later that year, children's clothes maker OshKosh B'Gosh Inc. signed up as a
regular customer. Soon, Sights had 400 employees custom-washing more than
100,000 pairs of jeans a week.
Since then, much of what is called the "finished wash" business has moved to
cheaper labor markets overseas or in Mexico. But closely held Sights has kept
chugging away, mostly because it early on recognized the lucrative worn-and-soiled
jeans niche. Of the 150,000 pieces of clothing Sights processes weekly, about
90,000 of them are permanently dirtied or frayed in some way. "We knew we had to
differentiate ourselves to survive," Bart says.
Devon Burt, creative director at Levi Strauss, calls Bart Sights "somewhat of an
industry legend." He adds, "Ten years ago, you would've never thought there would
have been someone like him, whose expertise is destroying denim."
To help hang on to its niche, Sights Denim designs its own styles, which it then
pitches to manufacturers and mills. Flea markets around the world provide
inspiration. Mr. Sights shows off a crumpled, camel-colored French worker's jacket
he unearthed browsing clothing cast-offs in Los Angeles not long ago. "It's a real
find," he says.
He is thinking about cloning the jacket; the trick will be to age buttons to give them
the worn look of the originals, and replicate the threadbare look and softly soiled
patterns in the fabric (skipping the hay he found in the pockets). Mr. Sights only
paid $40 for the jacket but "if someone had put the work into making it look that
old, it would have cost several hundred dollars," he explains.
The heart of the plant is Sights Denim's Abrasion Center, a warehouse specially
designed to rip up and despoil as many perfectly good pairs of pants as possible.
Visitors are confronted by a dark gray cloud billowing through the warehouse, the
gritty fallout of continuous sandblasting operations that pelt jeans with abrasive
aluminum oxide. Two shifts of workers keep the jeans lines running from 7 a.m. to
midnight, five days a week.
About 20 hand-scraping stations line one side of the warehouse. There, workers
apply sandpaper in carefully devised stroking patterns to each pair of jeans. The
patterns, which are devised by Mr. Hazel and then taught to the rest of the
handscrapers, take anywhere from two minutes to 32 minutes to apply, depending
on the severity of the abrasions.
In another corner, about 15 workers wield a toothbrush-shaped whirring tool called a
Dremel sander. Each disfigures jeans in a different way before passing them on; one
worker tears up waist bands, the next rips up back pockets, the next rips open the
hem on a pant leg, and so on.
The artistic heart of the Abrasion Center are eight sandblasting booths. Blasters,
wearing red helmets, striped "spacesuits" and breathing oxygen from a hose, attack
jeans with a fire hose that shoots out aluminum oxide under about 150 pounds of
pressure. On a good day, an experienced blaster can "global-blast" up to 600 pairs of
jeans-that is, scour every inch of every pair to give a totally worn look. If the order
is for "local blasting"simply mauling the knees and seats of jeans-blasters can often
manage 1,000 pairs a shift.
The master among blasters is Paul White, a 26-year-old who has worked for Sights
Denim for six years. He started out as a recycler, sweeping up aluminum-oxide grit
used for blasting, plus refilling piles of jeans for each of the sandblasters. A
coincidence led to a promotion: Bart Sights's wife was one of Mr. White's teachers
in high school, and she remembered that Mr. White liked to draw. "One day they
came to me and asked if I could still draw, because blasting is like being an artist
drawing on jeans," says Mr. White.
When friends question why ravaged jeans cost so much more than an unblemished
pair, Mr. White says they ought to come spend a day with him in the noise and grit
of his booth. "It's just a whole lot of work," he says. Besides, jean connoisseurs
understand that, these days, brand new is old-hat. "Sandblasting is a necessity now,
like an airbag in a car," Mr. White adds. "If you don't have it, it's like, you're not in."
Sanding and blasting is used to age and weather jeans; it is then left to a
sophisticated machine-washing operation to add the other necessary elements -- tints
that resemble grease, oil and various kinds and colors of dirt. Sometimes, when the
object is to make jeans that look like the kind your mother would put in a bag and
toss in the garbage, matters get a bit confusing. Not long ago, Sights quality-control
inspectors came upon a batch of pants so despicably soiled that they thought the
laundry had honestly messed up. So they sent them back for a proper washing.
But it was no mistake, says Donnie Harrison, head of the company's inspection
plant. "After a little research, we determined that's how Levi's had ordered them."
(See related letter: "Letters to the Editor: The Term `Rag Trade' Gains Real
Meaning" -- WSJ Oct. 28, 1999)
(See related letter: "Letters to the Editor: Let Them Wear Grunge" -- WSJ Nov. 3,
1999)
Copyright © 1999 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.