How We Expertly Hemmed These A.W.A.K.E. Mode Jeans — And Why People Trust Us With Their Most Unique Denim Alterations
By Maurice Malone Published November 22, 2025
They both have wheels to get you around, but you wouldn’t take your motorcycle to an auto dealer for repairs—and you shouldn’t trust suit tailors, seamstresses, or the cleaners with your denim. Not if you care about the jeans or the outcome.
When people really care about their denim, they eventually find their way to us. It’s not because we’re the cheapest. It’s because certain jeans deserve to be handled by denim-focused experts who understand it on a deeper level—how it’s built, how it behaves, and how to alter it without stripping away what makes it special.
Plenty of tailors can shorten pants, but denim is a different animal. And once in a while, a pair comes along that reminds us why our craft matters.
That was the case with this pair of A.W.A.K.E. Mode jeans—a wild, brilliant patchwork of mismatched denim panels, inverted jean parts, and an upside-down waistband used as the hem. A true statement piece. And the customer needed them shortened without disturbing any of the design.
At first, it sounded like the usual person asking for the “Original Hem” alteration, meaning cutting the hem off and sewing it back on. That’s the hacky amateur alteration that destroys the inside of the jeans or stiffens the hem and feels like a ring at the ankles that we won’t do. It’s unnecessary and creates a silly-looking seam over the stitch line. All this to keep the worn-looking edge, which will naturally come back on its own with wear and washing.
But once we heard a little more, it was clear this wasn’t that situation. We asked the customer to email photos so we could see what we were dealing with. And once the images arrived, it was obvious these jeans required real planning, not a quick answer.
The design is unlike anything you see in conventional denim. A.W.A.K.E. Mode built the hem out of an upside-down waistband, used misaligned panels of different denims, and added an inverted, non-functional jeans upper block at the bottom of the legs. In other words, there was no straight line to follow and no “clean break” where you could simply shorten the inseam without cutting through the artwork.
To get them to the customer’s desired length without disrupting the design, we had to map out a strategy—studying how the panels interacted, where structural seams were placed, and how to maintain the visual balance once the jeans were shortened. It wasn’t a standard hem. It was engineering.
This is the kind of work people come to us for. Anyone can shorten a pair of jeans. But when the denim is unique, expensive, or architecturally designed like these A.W.A.K.E. Mode jeans, “just hemming” becomes a problem only the best can solve.