A.P.C. Jeans Are Now for Maximalists, Too

An exclusive interview with Jean Touitou about the brand's unexpected new paint splattered denim program.
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Every stylish guy has a story about his first pair of raw denim and more often than not, that first pair were a pair of A.P.C. jeans. That's because for 30 years, A.P.C.'s raw jeans have been the pinnacle of minimalist-leaning, cool French dude perfection. And since something this good wasn't broke, A.P.C. didn't even offer washed denim options until 2015. But these days, denim is shredded, frayed, and distressed more than ever and to show their denim dominance once again, and celebrate the brand's 30th anniversary, the Jean Touitou-helmed brand is dropping 100 pairs of paint-splattered jeans that are about as far from its core raw denim program as it gets.

Paint-splattered jeans have always had a place among the menswear set. Helmut Lang's versions from the late 1990s remain a collector's item and the DIY style made a comeback during the workwear renaissance from a decade ago. But hese aren't just any 100 pairs of splattered A.P.C. jeans, either. In 2010, A.P.C. introduced the Butler program, which to this day allows customers to turn in their beat-up A.P.C. jeans in exchange for half off a new pair. The brand then washes, repairs, and sells the broken in pairs for $275. (One of the more ingenious marketing moves in denim history.) It's this stock of pre-loved pairs that founder Jean Touitou utilized for the new paint-splattered program, as he explained to us over email:

GQ: Paint splattered finishes have found their way onto jeans, boots, sweatshirts, and more for decades, but you’re just now getting into them. Why?

Jean Touitou: Fashion tradition...this is like water and fire at the same time, isn’t it? I was more into prints, regular prints, and always thought that anything too obviously artsy sucked big time. But then one day, five years ago, my Japanese stores have been asking me to customize a few "Butler jeans" for a special event. So I went to some art supply store and I bought some art supplies and I eventually ended up staining some pants. I remember they looked quite good. Then my Japanese partners asked me to paint on 30 butlers for our 30th anniversary in Japan, which I did. Then my French team asked me to round it up to a hundred for the rest of the world, which I just finished doing by hand. It was quite physically demanding.

What is it about paint splattered jeans that makes people romanticize them so much?Do they really? Well, maybe because they evoke art and people’s early years at school, or maybe because they feel something human behind it.

Collectors really love those old Helmut Lang "painter jeans." Were those an inspiration at all?
No. My inspiration was the Philip Roth Novel titled The Human Stain, period.

Are you splattering them all by hand? If so, what benefits do you get from doing it by hand versus a machine?
Yes by hand. It is impossible to have that done by a machine, since you do that on actual clothes. A machine could only do it on rolls of fabrics, which wouldn’t look so good. The jeans we paint on are all unique, since they all have been worn by different people.

What techniques are you using to achieve that artful splatter?

Here's how it goes:

  1. Washing the used jeans (they arrive to us unwashed).
  2. Dyeing (a very very light grey that gives them a beautiful invisible background).
  3. Mending the jeans.
  4. Hand-spraying with 4 hands at the time (me and Bambou, member of image team) with watered acrylic.
  5. Hand-spraying with ferrous chloride to soften the colors.
  6. Using a brush hand and some thicker acrylic, we decide which one needs more pink or red or yellow or chloride).
  7. Drying (which takes 12 hours).
  8. Ironing to fix the color.
  9. Signing [my name] on each pair, "Jean Touitou 2017."

When will they be available in the United States, and for how much?

There will be 3 or 4 jeans per shop, probably in May. They will retail for probably less than three hundred dollars.


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