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Denim arrives in bales. Not folded, not sorted, not clean — pressed into cubes about the size of a chest freezer and bound with wire. A bale is opened on the floor and the week begins with about four hundred pairs of trousers that somebody in another country stopped wearing.
The first pass is by weight. Anything under ten ounces goes to a separate pile; it will not hold a bag body without a lining, and we don't line. What is left gets a second pass by fade, which is the only part of this that looks like taste. A pair that faded evenly is less useful to us than a pair that faded around a wallet, a phone, a knee. Even fade is what a mill makes. Uneven fade is what a person makes.
The third pass is the seams. We open every pair at the inseam and pull. If the thread has gone brittle the panels will still cut, but the piece can't carry weight, so it goes to smaller work — a flap, a pocket facing, the strap on a mini bag. Roughly one pair in six comes through all three passes intact enough to become a bag body.
By Thursday the week's cutting list is set. What doesn't make it isn't waste — it goes back out as offcuts to the tailors two streets over. The only thing we throw away is wire.
Even fade is what a mill makes. Uneven fade is what a person makes.