Drop Ibara Slim Jeans

The race for better jeans has reached a fever pitch in recent years. Every name — from legacy denim brands to indie startups to one-person brands — put their skills on full display, churning out different versions of the Best Blue Jean.

Drop, an online marketplace for product enthusiasts, had released collaborative jeans with the likes of Naked & Famous and Raleigh Denim before, but the company’s foray into an in-house line of jeans was new territory. When it finally released the Ibara Slim Jeans, however, it seemed like Drop had known the space for decades.

“What we wanted to do was to make the ultimate enthusiast jean that was accessible to a bigger audience,” says Drop’s then-senior product manager of wearables John Webb. “And not just price-accessible, but wear-accessible, too.”

Any good jean starts with the materials. Here, Drop had denim custom-woven for them using three different yarn sizes, creating a fabric with tons of character that feels heavier than it actually is. From there, the rest of the details are ones you’d only find on dungarees in high-end denim stores or on a trip to Japan. The denimhead details — filled belt loops, lined yokes, hidden rivets, a double-selvedge button fly and a natural vegetable-tanned lambskin patch — would command a $300 price tag in many boutiques, but Drop’s jeans come in at a fraction of the price — just $129.

Though Webb and his team at Drop set out to create the ultimate enthusiast jean, they ended up producing the best value jean.

Specs

Fabric: 15-ounce Yoshiwa Mills Japanese selvedge denim

Fit: Slim taper

Provenance: Japan $129