DU 501: The Raw Denim Community

By Eric Steffen

The Cuffed Leg

You're on the subway. It's a normal Tuesday. And then you see it — a cuffed hem, a flash of selvedge ID, a stripe of color running along the inseam of the person sitting across from you. You look up. They've already noticed you noticing.

You don't need an introduction. You don't need a mutual friend or a shared group chat. Within thirty seconds you're talking about what denim it is, how long they've been wearing it, what the fades have done over the months. Two strangers, immediately fluent in the same language.

That's the raw denim community in miniature. No membership fee. No manual. No gatekeeping committee deciding who's in. Just a shared passion that announces itself in small, specific ways — and an instant warmth between people who feel it.

It's one of the things I love most about this world. And it's what makes me want more of it. Because the community is real and it's wonderful, but it's also more scattered than it should be. More online than in-person. More individual than collective. This article is about where the community lives, where it gathers, and — most importantly — how to help it grow.

Where It Started: The Forums

Before Instagram, before Reddit, before any of the infrastructure that now organizes niche communities online, there were forums. And for the raw denim community, two of them mattered more than any others.

Superfuture launched in 1999 as a streetwear and style message board, and by the mid-2000s it had become the primary gathering place for a new kind of denim obsessive. These were people who weren't satisfied with Nudie or A.P.C. — the brands that had introduced mainstream consumers to raw denim — and had gone looking for something more. What they found, largely through Superfuture, were obscure Japanese brands: Eternal, Samurai, Skull. Labels that offered superior denim, meticulous construction, and a rigor of craft that was almost impossible to find in the US at the time. Before Kiya Babzani opened Self Edge in San Francisco in 2006 — the first US store dedicated to Japanese heritage denim — the forums were essentially the only place you could learn about these brands, let alone find someone to buy from.

StyleForum ran parallel, slightly more menswear-broad but with a deep and serious denim contingent. Together the two communities produced something remarkable: a genuine culture of knowledge-sharing around an extremely specific subject. Members shared fade photos, debated mill quality, dissected construction details. In 2008, Self Edge collaborated with Japanese label Dry Bones to produce a limited jean for StyleForum members. They did it again in 2010, this time including Superfuture as well. Only 250 pairs were made. It remains one of the best examples of what forum culture, at its peak, could actually produce.

Heddels emerged as the editorial layer on top of that culture — and became, over time, one of the best sources of raw denim information anywhere. Deep, well-researched, genuinely authoritative. But editorial and community are different things, and Heddels never quite became the gathering place it could have been. That gap still exists.

Where It Lives Now

The forums haven't disappeared, but the center of gravity has shifted. Today, the raw denim community lives primarily in two places: Reddit and Instagram.

r/rawdenim is large, active, and genuinely knowledgeable. It's one of the better corners of Reddit — members are passionate, the information is usually solid, and the community works hard to separate signal from noise. Brand promotion is viewed with appropriate skepticism. Hype is deflated. Newcomers with honest questions generally get good answers.

What Reddit can't fully replicate is warmth. The medium rewards debate and opinion over relationship. You can learn an enormous amount on r/rawdenim. Building a friendship there is harder. Instagram fills a different gap — beautiful fade photography, brand discovery, the visual pleasure of seeing what raw denim becomes over years of wear. But Instagram is a broadcast medium at heart. It connects audiences to creators more naturally than it connects people to each other.

Both platforms are valuable. Neither is quite the community the raw denim world deserves. Which is why what happens in person matters so much.

Where It Gathers: Stores and Hangs

The best denim stores have always understood that they're not just selling jeans. They're creating space for people who care about the same things to find each other. At FITTED Underground, we've tried to do this deliberately — a Brooklyn Block Party each summer, events pairing denim with whiskey and conversation, Denim University classes that bring people in not just to buy but to learn. The jean is the beginning of the relationship, not the end of it.

Other stores do this well too. If there's a good raw denim shop in your city, pay attention to their events calendar. Show up. The people you'll meet there are your people.

And then there are the denim hangs.

A denim hang is exactly what it sounds like: a group of local enthusiasts, usually organized through Instagram, who get together to share their collections, show their fades, and spend a few hours talking about the thing they love. No agenda, no brand presence, no gatekeeping. Just people who care about denim, in a room together.

They've sprung up organically in cities across the world. @ladenimhangs in Los Angeles is one of the most active communities in the US — a group of enthusiasts who turned an Instagram page into a genuine ongoing friendship. @chicagodenimhangs is active in Chicago. There are communities across Europe, and in Japan — particularly in Kojima and Tokyo — the culture around denim gathering is deeply embedded in how the community operates. These hangs are some of the best things the raw denim world has produced. There should be more of them.

New York Denim Hangs — and David

About a decade ago, I started one myself.

I'd been talking with my friend Ramell about the idea — a gathering for New York denim lovers, welcoming to everyone, without the sharp edges that online spaces can sometimes develop. Our slogan was simple: All denim lovers welcome. I put up a post from my Instagram account. Our first hang was four people: me, Ramell, Christine, and David.

That's it. Four people in a room in New York City, talking about jeans.

It grew from there into something genuinely special. A community of quirky, passionate, warm individuals who happened to share a love of raw denim. Not the kind of people who used their knowledge as a barrier. The kind who used it as an invitation.

David was one of the founding four. He was a wonderful man — a devoted father, a generous friend, and one of the most enthusiastic stewards our little community had. Every year on my birthday, without fail, he'd reach out just to say he was thinking of me. Not a long message. Just a reminder that he was there.

In 2024, David died in a motorcycle accident.

I think about him when I think about what New York Denim Hangs was, and what it could still be. The community he helped build started from nothing — four people, one post, one idea — and became something worth grieving when it quieted down. That's not nothing. That's actually everything.

New York Denim Hangs has been dormant for a while. Building a brand, making jeans, writing a curriculum — it turns out there are only so many hours in a day. But I haven't let go of the idea. Maybe one day, when life balances out a little, I'll get back to it. In the meantime, I hope someone reading this gets inspired and does it themselves. David would have liked that.

The Bigger Gatherings: Events Worth Knowing

Beyond local hangs and store events, there are two larger institutions worth knowing about.

Kingpins is the denim industry's trade show — the premier gathering for mills, manufacturers, brands, and suppliers. It runs twice a year in Amsterdam (April and October), with additional shows in Hangzhou and New York. It's invite-only and oriented toward the trade rather than the consumer. You won't walk in off the street, but knowing it exists matters: it's where the supply chain conversations happen, where sustainable innovations get introduced, where the direction of the industry gets shaped. If you follow denim seriously, following Kingpins gives you a window into where things are heading.

Denim Days Amsterdam is the consumer-facing counterpart — open to the public, held each April at De Hallen and Denim City, where brands like Benzak and Kings of Indigo meet their community directly. It's the closest thing the raw denim world has to a festival: people who love jeans, gathered in one place, with the makers and the fabric and the culture all present at once. If you ever find yourself in Amsterdam in April, go.

New York had its own version before Covid — Denim Days NYC was a genuine community moment, the kind of event that made you feel the size and warmth of the community you'd been part of online. Covid ended it. It hasn't come back. That's a loss worth naming, and perhaps worth trying to fix.

How to Start Your Own

If you want a local denim community and one doesn't exist near you, here's the most useful thing I can tell you: don't wait for someone else to start it.

New York Denim Hangs started with one Instagram post and four people. That's the entire playbook. Here's a slightly more detailed version:

Start an Instagram page. The established format is @[city]denimhangs — it signals immediately what you are and makes you findable by anyone searching for local community. Post a call-out for local raw denim wearers. Tag a few brands. Be welcoming. Our slogan — all denim lovers welcome — is yours to borrow.

Pick a low-barrier first gathering. A bar with good light, a coffee shop, a park. Somewhere people can show up without any commitment beyond showing up. Don't overthink the venue. The people are the point.

Give it a little structure. An elevated denim hang isn't just standing around. Do a fade review — everyone shares what their denim has done since the last hang, what caused what, what they're noticing. Invite someone with knowledge to share: a maker, a retailer, someone who's been deep in this world for a long time. Pick a theme for conversation: natural dyes, Japanese mills, selvedge construction, the ethics of the supply chain. Good drinks help. The conversation will find its own level from there.

Start a newsletter. Substack or Mailchimp, monthly, nothing elaborate. A way to keep the community connected between hangs — share fade photos, link to interesting articles, announce the next gathering. Email is slower and quieter than Instagram. That's what makes it good for community.

That's it. Four people, one post, one idea. The rest grows from there.

What This Community Could Be

The raw denim community is defined by self-selection. Nobody ends up here by accident. The people who find their way to raw denim — who learn what it is, choose to invest in it, commit to wearing it and caring for it and watching it change — tend to share something beyond the jeans themselves. A set of values around craft, longevity, provenance, and the quiet satisfaction of things made well and worn honestly.

Those values are worth cultivating. And they're best cultivated in community — in rooms where people can share what they know, show what they've made, and remind each other why any of this matters in a world that mostly doesn't notice.

In future articles, I want to explore what those values actually are and why they extend well beyond denim. But that's for DU 502. For now: find your people. If they're not nearby, make them nearby. The community is waiting to be built.

What Comes Next

DU 501 maps the raw denim community as it exists today. DU 502 goes deeper into the values underneath it — exploring slow fashion, what it means, and why it matters far beyond the jeans you're wearing.

← Previous: DU 404 — The Evolution of the Craft  |  Next: DU 502 — What is Slow Fashion and Why Does It Matter? →

Further Reading

• Board of Education: What Forum Culture Taught Us About Style — Complex
• Kingpins Show — The denim industry's premier trade event
• Must-Follow Instagrammers: The LADenimHangs Crew — Denim Hunters
• r/rawdenim — Reddit's raw denim community

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.