DU 206: The Best Places to Shop for Raw Denim in NYC

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By Eric Steffen
Founder / Maker
FITTED Underground

New York is one of the finest cities in the world to shop for raw denim in person. Within a few square miles of Manhattan — and a short bridge away in Brooklyn and Queens — you'll find retailers, brand flagships, and independent workshops that together represent the full depth of the global raw denim market. This is not a ranked list. Every place on it has earned its spot by doing something genuinely well. Consider it a map — use it to match where you go with what you're looking for.

The Retailers

Blue in Green — 8 Greene St, SoHo

The pilgrimage destination. Since 2006, Blue in Green has been the premier source for Japanese selvedge denim in the United States — and nearly 20 years in, it hasn't lost a step. The selection is extraordinary: Oni, Pure Blue Japan, Samurai, Fullcount, Resolute, TCB Jeans, Kapital, and more, curated by a team that knows each brand as well as the brands know themselves. Every pair of jeans purchased in-store gets a free chain-stitch hem on a vintage Union Special machine from the 1950s. The name, for the denim heads in the room, is an homage to Miles Davis's "Kind of Blue" — fitting for a store whose owners bonded over jazz and Japanese denim in equal measure. If you want to understand the depth and breadth of Japanese denim without flying to Osaka, you start here.

8 Greene St, SoHo · blueingreensoho.com

Self Edge — 157 Orchard St, Lower East Side

The collector's store. Self Edge holds exclusive North American distribution rights for Iron Heart, Flat Head, Strike Gold, and a handful of other Japanese brands you simply cannot find anywhere else in the country. The staff knows the inventory the way a sommelier knows a wine list — in depth, with genuine enthusiasm. Bring your well-worn jeans: Self Edge does repair work on a vintage Singer darning machine, and they're good at it. This is the destination for the heavyweight obsessive, the serious collector, or anyone ready to go deep into territory that most shops don't even know exists.

157 Orchard St, Lower East Side · selfedge.com

Standard & Strange — 238 Mulberry St, Nolita

Standard & Strange started as two guys selling denim out of a back alley in Oakland. The NYC outpost on Mulberry Street, which opened in 2023, brings that same ethos to Nolita: a tight, thoughtful curation of heritage Americana, Japanese workwear, high-quality boots, leather goods, and denim that you genuinely cannot find most places. The brand has three simple rules for what it carries — it must be something the founders would wear themselves, it must be built to last, and it must be made as ethically as possible. The result is a store that feels handpicked rather than stocked. The staff is exceptionally knowledgeable and famously generous with their time. The denim selection is serious: Standard & Strange has commissioned exclusive store-specific drops, including Japan-made jeans branded specifically for the NYC location down to the rivets. Worth going out of your way for — and as it happens, it's right around the corner from 3sixteen and Left Field, making it a natural part of any Nolita denim day.

238 Mulberry St, Nolita · standardandstrange.com

In Memoriam: Brooklyn Denim Co.

338 Wythe Ave, Williamsburg — closed January 2026 after 17 years.

Frank Pizzurro's store deserves its flowers.

Brooklyn Denim Co. opened in Williamsburg in 2010, before the neighborhood had fully transformed, when the blocks around Wythe Avenue still smelled more like industry than brunch. For 17 years, Frank built one of the best denim shops in the city: welcoming to beginners and hardcores alike, thoughtful about both men's and women's options, and one of the first retailers in New York to champion small independent denim brands before that was a trend. He carried First Standard. He carried Todd Martin. He carried brands that deserved an audience and gave them one.

I have to say something personal here, because it's true and because it matters. Frank and I became close over the years. It was Frank who encouraged me to start making ready-to-wear jeans. He wanted to carry my product and pushed me to think beyond bespoke. That was not a small thing. The act of producing RTW and bespoke side by side gave me the tools, the experience, and the perspective to develop the custom size option that now sits between them — the thing that makes FITTED Underground what it is. I wouldn't have gotten there without Frank's encouragement and belief.

Brooklyn Denim Co. was one of the originators of the species. The physical store is gone. The brand continues online, and the repair service lives on at the same address under the name The Mending Station. Go show them some love.

brooklyndenimco.com

The Brands

Left Field NYC — 280 Mott St, Nolita + 657 Woodward Ave, Ridgewood, Queens

Left Field has been making jeans in the United States since 1998 — which puts them among the longest-running American-made denim brands still operating. Everything is 100% American-made, 100% cotton, raw selvedge, sewn and finished in New York. Chain-stitch hemming on Union Special machines is available at both locations. Founder Christian McCann is a craftsman of the old school: he has been building this thing slowly, seriously, and without shortcuts for more than 25 years. The new Nolita location on Mott Street, which opened in late 2025, is a beautiful space and puts Left Field in excellent company in one of the best blocks for denim shopping in the city.

280 Mott St, Nolita + 657 Woodward Ave, Ridgewood, Queens · leftfieldnyc.com

3sixteen — 190 Elizabeth St, Nolita

Co-founded by Andrew Chen, who is based in New York, 3sixteen has built one of the most respected raw denim lines in the country since 2003. Their Japanese selvedge jeans are designed here — the point of view is distinctly New York, clean and considered — though production happens in Los Angeles. The Nolita flagship is worth visiting for the space alone: reclaimed Douglas fir floors, century-old brick, textured plaster walls. The staff knows the product deeply. And the location, steps from Left Field on the same block, makes this a natural double stop on any serious denim day in the city.

190 Elizabeth St, Nolita · 3sixteen.com

Naked & Famous — 123 Grand St, SoHo

The NYC flagship of the Montreal-based brand is an experience worth having on its own terms. The store is indigo-dyed from the counter to the floors. The dressing room curtains are boro-stitched Japanese fabric. There is a hidden door that opens by pulling an antique Japanese doll. Brandon Svarc's team sources exclusively from Japanese mills and makes everything in Canada — which, combined with a direct-to-consumer model, keeps prices lower than comparable quality jeans sold through retail. If you are new to raw denim and want the full sensory immersion — the smell, the weight, the darkness of fresh indigo — this is the place to begin. The staff is welcoming to newcomers. No one is going to make you feel like you don't belong.

123 Grand St, SoHo · nakedandfamousdenim.com

The Indies

These are one-person operations — designers and makers working from their own studios, selling direct, doing things their own way. What they offer that no retailer can is the chance to talk to the person who made what you're buying. All three are friends and colleagues of mine. I believe in their work.

Williamsburg Garment Co. — 67 West St, Suite 310, Greenpoint, Brooklyn

Before you walk in, know who you're dealing with. Fast Company has called Maurice Malone "the Steve Jobs of denim," and the New York Times wrote that "few designers have been able to marry hip-hop flavor and designer fashion as successfully as Mr. Malone." In the early 1990s he was a founding figure of hip-hop fashion, running a streetwear label out of Detroit at a time when almost no one was taking that market seriously. His store, The Hip Hop Shop, opened in 1993 and became the city's premier rap battle venue — a direct inspiration for the 2002 film 8 Mile. He was nominated for the CFDA's Perry Ellis Award for New Menswear Designer of the Year in 1997. And he is the inventor of aging wash processes — the techniques that make pre-distressed jeans look authentically worn — that are now used in denim factories worldwide. Today he runs a small Brooklyn studio making American raw denim jeans and offering what may be the finest denim alteration service in the country. You can walk in, try something on, and talk to the man himself. That level of access to that level of knowledge is genuinely rare.

67 West St, Suite 310, Greenpoint, Brooklyn · williamsburggarment.com

First Standard Co. — Bushwick/Ridgewood (studio; contact for appointment)

Sergei Zolotariov has been doing innovative denim design since 2004, quietly and without compromise. He was born in the Soviet Union, where denim was forbidden fruit. When he came to the United States in the late 1980s he started collecting — and never stopped. First Standard makes unisex denim and canvas garments on 1940s vintage industrial machines (Union Special, Singer) using American-sourced materials, entirely in New York City. The designs draw simultaneously from workwear tradition and avant-garde deconstruction — a combination that sounds unlikely and looks exactly right. Sergei has stepped away from the fashion industry's noise to be completely true to his craft. If you know his work, you already know why it matters. If you don't know it yet, this is a warm introduction.

firststandardnyc.com

Todd Martin Studio — 451 Fairview Ave, Ridgewood, Queens

Todd Martin runs a one-man denim studio in Ridgewood, Queens, doing serious work on a collection of beautiful old machines. He makes jeans, does custom and repair work, and has the kind of obsessive relationship with pattern and fabric that only develops over years of quiet, focused practice. He learned the repair side from a stint tailoring at Levi's. He started making his own jeans because once he knew how, it didn't make sense not to — and he's been refining the work ever since. Brooklyn Denim Co. carried his product before they closed, which is one good person's endorsement of another. Worth the trip to Queens.

451 Fairview Ave, Ridgewood, Queens · toddmartinstudio.com

And Just Across the River: Todd Shelton — East Rutherford, NJ

Not in the city, but close enough — ten miles from Manhattan — and too good to leave off. Todd Shelton runs a made-to-order clothing factory in East Rutherford, New Jersey, producing Japanese and Italian selvedge jeans at $320, entirely to order, with zero inventory. Every pair is cut and sewn after you place your order. Factory visits are available by appointment. Todd chose the harder path — building and running his own factory, learning every machine, hiring and training every person — because he believed it was the right way to make clothes. That sounds familiar to me. Worth knowing about.

toddshelton.com

Then There's Us 👋

FITTED Underground — 108 Bayard St, Williamsburg, Brooklyn

We'll be straightforward about ourselves.

FITTED Underground is the only place in New York — and to our knowledge, the only place in the world — where you can buy ready-to-wear jeans, order a custom size pair cut to your exact measurements, or commission a fully bespoke pair, all under one roof. Ready-to-wear comes with free in-store alterations. Custom size runs a modest premium over RTW. Bespoke is for those who want something that exists nowhere else on earth.

But what makes us genuinely different isn't just the service tiers. It's that we make everything here. We source the fabric, design the fits, draft the patterns, cut, and sew — all in-house, in Williamsburg. That in-house capability gives us a depth of product knowledge almost no other shop can match. We're not selling someone else's decisions. We understand every one of our own, because we made them.

Beyond jeans: shirts, jackets, and some of the best T-shirts you'll find anywhere in the United States. Our denim bar lets you feel the full range of our fabrics before committing to anything. Come in, run your hands across the selvedge, hold the weight of a 17oz next to an 11oz, ask us anything. We have opinions and we'll share them freely.

We are also, for what it's worth, a genuinely New York brand. We design here. We source here. We make here. The jeans we sell were sewn in the same building where you're standing. That matters to us — and we think it should matter to you.

108 Bayard St, Williamsburg, Brooklyn · fittedunderground.com · How It Works · Book a Fitting

How to Make a Day of It

If you want to see the full map in a single day, here's one way to route it. Start in SoHo with Blue in Green and Naked & Famous — they're a short walk from each other and together cover the full range of Japanese selvedge retail. Move north to Nolita for Standard & Strange, 3sixteen, and Left Field — all within a block of each other on Mulberry, Elizabeth, and Mott Streets. Then cross the bridge into Brooklyn — Greenpoint for Williamsburg Garment Co. if you have energy left, and Williamsburg for FITTED Underground to close the day out.

It is a serious day of denim. Wear comfortable shoes. Budget more time than you think you need at each stop — the conversations are usually worth it.

Did We Miss Anyone?

New York's denim scene is wider and deeper than any single guide can fully capture, and it shifts — shops open, shops close, new makers set up studios in neighborhoods we haven't found yet. If there's someone doing important work that we left off this list, we want to know. Reach out directly, or come find us at 108 Bayard Street and tell us in person. This guide will grow as the scene grows.

What Comes Next

That's the 200 level — how to buy, how to fit, what things cost, and where to find them in New York. The 300 level is where the relationship with the garment deepens: how to wash, how fading works, how to get great fades, and how to repair what you love rather than replace it. That starts with DU 301: How to Wash Raw Denim.

← Previous: DU 205 — The Economics of Raw Denim  |  Next: DU 206 — Where to Shop for Raw Denim in New York City →

Further Reading

• Brooklyn Denim Co. Closes Williamsburg Store — Sourcing Journal
• Quality and Community Remain Core to Blue In Green — Sourcing Journal
• Stay Fly: Maurice Malone — The Hip Hop Museum
• Q&A with Brooklyn Denim Co. Founder Frank Pizzurro — Sourcing Journal

Eric Steffen is the founder of FITTED Underground, a custom jeans and raw denim workshop at 108 Bayard Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He has been making jeans by hand since 2014. Denim University is his attempt to share everything he's learned — about the history, the craft, and the culture behind the world's most enduring garment.