Care For Your (Denim/ Wool/ Cotton)
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Wait, so you guys are going to pay (it's a gift I understand) $40 for a detergent that is pure soap on coconut oil/potassium basis? You do realize that chemically that is basically the same as a Castille or Marseille soap on olive oil/potassium basis? The cleaning properties will be identical for practical purposes.
You can get the same effect from a $4 piece of Marseille soap. Except that that piece is not packed in plastic and does not need to be shipped around the world thereby creating a rather big carbon footprint. And I'm not even going to talk about the rather obscene margin that would make me feel super ripped off. I would accept that as a gift as to not offend the giver but I would certainly not buy it.
And all of that is beside the fact that our denim is still 100% cotton and thus can be washed perfectly fine with any decent brand detergent, your hair shampoo or ivory soap for that matter.
Till
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Stewart, Tfar's pretty eloquent on these matters so I wont go on at length but wabi-sabi (often shortened to wabi) is about the aesthetic qualities and beauty of entropy effect on objects - but it is much more nuanced than that. Wikipedia has a useful enough entry as a starting point.
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That one bottle of soap isn´t gonna break me. Besides - I only wash denim 4 times a year - so this bottle will last me a long time.
We can do anything
http://bybeatle.com -
<–---- is also stoked on Doc Bronners.
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Hectic's explanation of wabi-sabi is spot on. It basically means that things get a patina by aging and that that patina can make them more beautiful because it tells a story and connects the object to its user. The formal component is important, too. A nice diamond pattern on the back of a jeans leg is probably more interesting than a plain blue surface esthetically.
You get a bit of a philosophical problem when you idolize and provoke the wabi-sabi effect by putting a wallet in your jeans or a knife just to get the cool effect even if you normally don't do that. Wabi-sabi should come naturally, at least for the purists. Or people who wash rarely, or use brushes or lemon juice or sun or starch to encourage fades. A purist would say that a person who does that is hardly any better than a person who buys a pair of pre-treated denim jeans. It should come naturally or even better accidentally because the accidental shape is the shape of nature. Like the fade on my shoes that I once posted here. That's a prime example of great wabi-sabi.
Till
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Till, I can totally relate to your last post on the issue of Wabi-Sabi, it should be an organic process, anything else is NOT wabi-sabi…
Exactly, Stewart! Now, if you happen to always carry your wallet in your left front pocket for example and you put it there in your jeans, too, that's ok in my book. But if you put all kinds of props in there just to coerce some wabi-sabi out of it, then that is more wishi-washi.
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Dchill, that's cool. Another Austinite! So I won't be the only bugger wearing IH here. That's sad and good at the same time.
Simon, that is excellent wabi-sabi. Same thing would be if you rode a bike to school every day and then you'd get a fade where the saddle sits and extra heavy creases behind the knees. That's the good stuff.
Till
