We’re Back With the Levi’s 501 Shrink to Fit Review

So a fair amount of people are like, “Mike, I want to see the progress on your Levi’s or your Blundstones and stuff.” And sure, that’s fine, I can do that.

The only problem is a lot of it is just reviewing fades and stuff. It’s just someone like, “Here are my uh denim jeans, you could see this pretty good, um…wear.” I want to hear this, but I also feel like it’s kind of boring, so I will try something else. But I also feel like it’s kind of boring, so I will try something else.

Let’s Talk About These Weird Lines First

Okay, so what I decided basically was that I’m just gonna do it like a regular article. I’m not gonna lay on the floor and lick the denim like you all want.

The Levi’s 501s straight-leg jeans—right off the bat, you’ll notice two things that obviously wouldn’t come on every pair of jeans. The first thing is these weird lines on the side of the jeans.

I actually tapered them so they were kind of slim fitting. And then I, you know, I said I don’t want that anymore, and I took those stitches, and I shoved them up somewhere! So those stitches are gone, but you can still see where the fades are.

I don’t know how to sew at all or even how to set up a sewing machine properly. It was just kind of a best guess, and it looked pretty good, but I just kind of wanted to go with a straight leg jean, so I pulled out all the stitches.

And to be honest, I really like straight-leg jeans, and I think basically everyone should wear straight-leg jeans because I kind of think most people—besides really skinny legs and stuff—are going for that look, and not everybody has, you know, super cigarette legs.

A lot of people would benefit from straight leg or slim straight just because it really complements people’s bodies more, kind of evens them out. I don’t know if I’ll ever do a fashion article like, “Oh, this is how I wear pants,” but if I do, that’ll probably be something I talk about.

Another thing that I wanted to note is that there’s a really poorly sewn patch on the bottom cuffs, and that’s basically when I was ripping the stitches out. I had a seam ripper, and I jabbed it into the pants and ripped them, so I decided to patch them. Found some old pants that I never wore—they were brown.

Eventually, I will replace it with an actual jean patch or denim patch, and then I will sew that up with something other than dental floss. I don’t want to have a catastrophe.

One Year with These Bad Boys

Okay, anyway, the meat. The Levi’s 501 shrink to fit review—I’ve had them for just about a year. In the first article, I did the initial wear and soak and stuff like that. I didn’t wear them for a year straight, I want to say probably closer to six or seven months straight, and uh, they’re wearing in pretty good.

I got them for 30 bucks—it’s super plain mass-produced denim, so I didn’t expect anything crazy. It’s on the lighter side of denim. If you’re in the raw denim world, I think it’s 12 ounces. So, really, don’t expect anything crazy from Levi 501s, you know, standards. They’re not going to do anything crazy, but they fade well, they get really, really soft really fast.

The Sizing Situation

When I first got them I got 30 length, 29 waist, and I could barely pull them on. I couldn’t breathe, I was super uncomfortable with them.

I actually—I’m glad I did that because maybe if I got a 30-30 or something like that, the waist would have been better initially, but these are a really, really good fit for me right now, especially because they’re just tight enough where if I don’t have a belt it’s fine, they’re not loose or anything, but if I do have a belt, you know, it’s just—it feels better on my groin.

The length—I definitely would have gotten a 32. I cuffed them anyway just because I don’t think my current style kind of lends itself to not-cuffed, wider-legged pants. Other than that, I’ve done pretty much everything in these jeans.

There actually was a small amount of time where it was a little cold outside, and I would go for runs in these jeans—not far runs, I’m not a good runner, but you know, like a mile, a mile and a half or something like that, and then I’d usually walk three or four miles in like a two, three-month span. So it got a lot of wear but nothing too crazy.

The wear is not too bad, and the fades are not dramatic at all. It’s really easy to get vintage fades with Levi’s. I want to say it’s near impossible to get actually, like, you know, Iron Heart or Unbranded like crazy contrast fades just because that’s not the denim—unless maybe you don’t wash it for like a year or two.

Still, at that point, the fades are going to be yellow, and the jeans would be crusty and held up, so I don’t recommend that.

The Battle Damage Report

But the jeans are holding up, you know, semi-well. There’s a little rip in the pocket area, which I do kind of expect from all jeans—it’s because it’s where I put my phone, and now I kind of gravitated to putting my phone in the back pocket, but at the time, I just wanted wear on my jeans wherever it was going to be so I kept my phone there.

It’s kind of breaking through; you can see the wefts coming through, and you can see the white on the left side. On the right side, you can see, you know, that’s going to start happening well eventually, too.

I can also see that the pocket bags have a hole in them, and that’s kind of what you get with these $30, you know, cheap jeans is that the pocket bags are there and they’re fine, but they’re not anything to write home about—they can’t hold much. So you know, it’s ripping through. It’s nothing really crazy and is kind of expected. It’s a very thin material.

You can kind of see that the whiskers are coming in really well on these jeans. There’s a little bit of yellowing, so I wish I washed them more. I might Oxiclean them or something like that just because I feel yellow on jeans does not go well for my aesthetic,—but the whiskers are looking pretty good.

The honeycombs are probably the best. Obviously, they’re going to get the most wear because my legs always bend when I walk. Trying to straighten them out so I get better fades, but those look pretty good. There’s a really nice wash of some dark denim mixing with the lightest shade of denim so that looks good.

But all in all, I don’t know how to do an update article. What the—what do you want from me? The jeans are still there, and I still wear them.

The only thing that’s wearing through is the crotch area if I hold it up to the light, and you know, at the end of the day when you take your pants off, and you put them on your head, and you run around the house for a little bit—now I have the two little um holes that I can see through pretty well. There’s a little bit of weft holding it together, but you know, I could pee right through, and now people can’t escape me at jean time.

The Future of These Jeans

I don’t have a good gauge of how much wear is left in these pants. I’m gonna go all self-repairs on these. I’ll try to patch them up as best that I can and, you know, see how long I can wear them and fade them and kind of get that really nice look.

I’m gonna up the frequency of washing a little bit more so they last longer, and we’ll just see where I go from there. Obviously, like I said, I haven’t had a lot of uh raw denim jeans so I really don’t know how long they should last. These are kind of holding up how you’d expect a $30 to $50  pair of jeans to hold up, you know, nothing crazy.

Watch This Review

Wrapping This Thing Up

But yeah, I think that’s it for my Levi’s 501 Shrink to Fit review. Thank you so much for reading. Bye!

This article was adapted from Michael Kristy’s video on The Iron Snail, with edits from FashionBeans, and was reviewed by Michael to ensure the integrity of his original content. Watch the full video here.