Your options for washing jeans are aplenty, if and when you want to. You should always check out the product-care tag first, but most jeans can be hand-washed, steamed, or put in the washing machine.

Today, the most coveted jeans are made in Japan (generally in Osaka, where a small cluster of brands called the ‘Osaka Five’ use denim from unique looms sold-off by the US in the 1970s) and importing ...