The Big Lie in Hem Hacking Your Jeans by Keeping the Original Hem

While I’d much rather see you wearing jeans that are the appropriate length for your fashion ensemble than to see some other haggard, sloshy, or excessively scrunched denim fabric hanging around at your feet – I must take a stand on the current wave of popularity in hemming your jeans by keeping the original hem which “you love.”

Maybe it isn’t really a lie, but more an assumed belief about a jean hem.

I totally get it. Like all of us, you were smitten when you bought your jeans. Unfortunately, like many of us, the length was in need of some attention.

Did you really fall in love with those jeans because the hem is what attracted you to them? I dare say you were not.

Many a designer would be disappointed if that were the truth. All of the time spent in detailing the entire body of those fab jeans, at every juxtaposition of pieced denim fabric would have gone to waste.

From fabric selection to design, to cutting, then sewing, while adding along the way every unique combination of threads, stitches, rivets, buttons, labels, zippers, pulls, and any other wonderful embellishment shows up in the price you paid. Oh yes – and all of the design and detailing in those marvelously thick and expensive hangtags (which you should keep to assist you in sewing the most lovely new hem).

I ask again, was the primary reason you bought them due to the hem?

If you are fashion savvy enough to realize that your jeans need to be hemmed, you are lucky enough to know how to machine sew a straight stitch, you have the time to actually hem them, and you already invested a good bit of cash to buy those jeans – you should know that you do not need to unnecessarily style hack the hem of your jeans.

I believe in you and your abilities to at least meet the basic quality in an original factory hem. Yes, it is basic.  All you need to know is how to prep it, how to properly match the thread (there are countless options to be found at your local fabric store – believe it), how to distress the hem so that it is equal to the original if you so desire (but I let time, washing, and wearing do this for me), and a few simple tools and notions that you probably already have.

The additional time involved in the process of hemming to duplicate the original is minute in comparison to the value of your jeans.

Do the designer, all of the people involved in constructing your jeans, and your heart proud. Don’t hack your way through the hem – and no, the hack is not really invisible when you are wearing them – don’t you dare believe that.