Prps

PRPS jeans are created by Akademiks, a New York based clothing company founded in partnership by a former top Nike designer, Donwan Harrell. Donwan began the PRPS project, which is one of Donwan's biggest projects.

PRPS jeans are manufactured in Japan, unlike other jeans which are mostly manufactured in China. The Japanese manufacturer of the jeans uses looms from the 1960s. Modern looms are more efficient in the amount of material used; however, the older, classic looms produce a stronger edge to the fabric.

Donwan Harrell, a founder of the clothing brand Akademiks, is a denim fanatic and can go on in some detail about his newest project, a premium denim line called Prps. The brand's target buyer is not the person who rejects fashion but the denim supersnob: the type who studies interior stitching and other things that no one else notices. The production run for Prps jeans is quite small, and they are available only in men's sizes. Mass-market jeans are made in China, and many premium rivals are made in California, but Prps are manufactured in Japan.

The cloth-making process, Harrell says, was inspired by the denim worn by actual workers before jeans became middle-class leisure wear. So were the details that seem to be the most crucial component of premium denim: the flaws. The process of making denim look 2, 5 or even 20 years old is touted by some jeans makers in long-winded tags that seem designed to ''educate'' the consumer -- like a pair of Paper Denim & Cloth jeans explaining that ''individually applied hand abrasion and scraping,'' among other things, were inflicted on the denim for an ''average processing time'' of 6.4 hours. Harrell has studied his own wornout jeans and the ones worn by mechanics he deals with while drag-racing to guide the production of holes, fading and even the occasional ''organic'' greasy smear.

Harrell intends to keep Prps premium and rare. Interestingly, he makes no claim that a pair of Prps might actually last longer than other jeans. But while denim fanatics may like the idea of a stronger fabric, the reality is that they will move onto new styles long before actual durability becomes an issue. For them, settling for anything less than the latest premium breakthrough would be like being out of uniform.