Few people know denim like James Sullivan, a former pop-culture writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, and author of Jeans: A Cultural History of an American Icon.  In the tome – which is a bible for any self-respecting jeans-junkie -- Sullivan combs through the complex history of denim culture.

“Every generation has changed jeans to fit with the times,” says Sullivan, who lives outside of Boston, Massachusetts.  And Jeans, released this fall, charts the evolution – one rivet at a time. 

So, when faced with a particularly well-crafted, flawlessly finished pair of Prps jeans, psychoPEDIA knew exactly who to call.  Here, Sullivan takes the time to muse on everything from crotch rivets to white-dude dreads, and the scintillating denim details in between.  In his own words: 

The real clincher for me is the crotch rivet. There’s an amusing, if apocryphal, story about Levi’s in which Walter Haas Sr., the company patriarch between the wars, stood uncomfortably close to a campfire, then went back to the office and instructed his staff to remove the copper rivet from the bottom of the button-fly on the company’s signature 501s.

My new pair of Prps jeans has a crotch rivet. It’s one of the many ways designer Donwan Harrell has meticulously recreated a bygone era of blue jeans history. In a time when high-end jeans makers are falling over each other to come out with the most up-to-the-minute cuts and washes, Prps is an authentic throwback. 

Being a writer, I’m a sucker for the “story,” and Prps has a great one. If every premium jeans company needs to have a clearly defined brand image to distinguish itself from the competition, then Harrell’s jeans are well-suited to withstand the test of time. The idea behind them already has. 

Harrell, who co-founded Akademiks and was a leading designer for Nike, wants his jeans to honor what made the quintessential American product a classic in the first place. The denim on my pair was unprocessed, sort of stiff at first – perfect for breaking in. I’m old-school that way – I’d rather break them in myself, over time, than have someone do it for me with a jug of chemicals and a sand block.   

I’m 41, with three kids. Although I’m supposed to be the expert, having written a book on jeans, I’ve personally avoided the last several trends in jeans – and I don’t mean just skinny-leg and low-rise. I was already too old for the super-baggy look when that took hold a decade or more ago. 

A lifelong Levi’s loyalist, or at least since I started buying my own clothes, I’m drawn to the premium brands that ignore contemporary style in favor of the vintage look of 50 or 60 years ago -- Farmer, Rag & Bone. These Prps jeans are cut with room, kind of boxy, a look that lends itself well to a few inches of cuff, the way I usually wear my jeans. (Short legs, y’see.) Cuffing them shows off the selvage, too, which appeals to my inner denim nerd. With Chuck Taylor’s and a T-shirt, I feel like Jackson Pollock in these things. Not that I’m in a hurry to splatter them with paint – their nun-faded, deep-blue denim makes them my fancy-restaurant jeans at the moment.

There are plenty more intriguing details, too. Love the bag liners inside the pockets – they’re camouflage. The back pockets are nice and clean – no stitching embellishments to speak of, just a small purple tag at the bottom of the right rear. (The name Prps, apparently, implies Harrell’s affection for the color purple as well as the company’s one-word motto, “Purpose.” One of the multi-colored buttons inside the fly is purple.) And if you check out the brand’s handsome web site, you learn that Harrell has trotted the globe in search of the best materials and production, sourcing his cotton in Africa and hiring expert vintage-loom operators in Japan to do the construction.

“The jean grows with you,” he says, “like dreads.” Again, I’m way beyond the long hair phase, and even when I was in it, white-guy dreads would have been a tragic mistake. But I know what he means, and I know what I like.

Get Yours:

For more on Prps, go to prpsgoods.com 

James Sullivan is the author of “Jeans: A Cultural History of an American Icon.”