You’re staring at a pair of perfectly good jeans, but their standard, factory-finished hem feels boring and dated. You want to inject some modern style and personality into them instantly.

To make a raw hem on jeans, simply cut off the existing hem with sharp scissors at your desired length. For a natural frayed look¹, put them through a hot wash and dry cycle.

For the last two decades, I've lived and breathed denim. At my factory, DiZNEW, finishing is one of the most exciting parts of the process.

We transform simple denim into a piece with character. Your insight about letting the washing machine do the fraying is spot-on. It’s a technique we admire because it mimics natural wear, which is the heart of great denim style. That fear of jeans unraveling?

Mostly a myth with good quality denim. I'm going to walk you through the simplest way to get this look, and then show you a few pro-level tricks to customize it perfectly.

How to make jeans hem raw?

Your jeans are the right fit, but the hem is all wrong for the look you want. You want to give them a quick, stylish update but are worried about making an irreversible mistake.

Create a perfect raw hem by first measuring and marking your desired length while wearing the jeans. Then, lay them flat and cut cleanly across with sharp fabric scissors. This simple cut is the foundation.

This is the easiest modification you can make to a pair of jeans, and it has the biggest impact. My friend Dean, a top denim designer, always says that changing the hemline can change the entire attitude of the pants. The most important step is the first one: getting the length right.

Put on the jeans with the shoes you plan to wear them with most often. Look in a full-length mirror and fold the cuff up to where you want the new hem to be.

I suggest placing a pin or making a small chalk mark right there. Take them off, lay them flat, and measure from the crotch down to your mark.

Then, use that measurement to mark the other leg so they are perfectly symmetrical. Use sharp fabric scissors for the cleanest cut. Don’t worry if it’s not laser-straight; a little imperfection adds to the charm.

How do I fray the bottom of my jeans?

You've cut your jeans, but now you have a sharp, clean edge that doesn't look natural. You want that soft, feathery fringe that you see on high-end designer denim.

To manually fray the bottom of your jeans, use a seam ripper or a pair of tweezers to pull out the vertical blue threads along the cut edge, which will expose and release the horizontal white threads.

This is where you get to play finish-master. While washing provides a great "all-over" fray, manual fraying gives you incredible control.

Denim is a twill weave fabric², typically made with blue "warp" threads running vertically and white "weft" threads running horizontally. The secret to a beautiful fray is to remove some of the blue threads to let the white ones shine.

Your Fraying Toolkit

You can achieve different looks with different tools.

Tool	Resulting Fray	Best For
Tweezers	Delicate, long, stringy frays	A controlled, feathery look
Seam Ripper	Faster, slightly thicker frays	Quickly starting the process
Stiff Brush	Soft, fuzzy, short frays	A subtle, worn-in effect

After you cut your hem, simply take your chosen tool and start pulling at the blue threads at the very edge.

You’ll find they come out quite easily, leaving behind a beautiful fringe of white threads. You can fray just a quarter-inch for a subtle look, or go for a full inch for a more dramatic statement.

How to make a raw edge hem?

You love the aesthetic of a raw hem, but you're worried that the fraying will continue up the leg wash after wash, eventually shortening your jeans and ruining them. You want the style without the risk.

To create a stable raw edge hem, sew a single, straight line of stitching about half an inch above your cut line. This stitch acts as an invisible barrier, allowing the hem to fray up to that point and no further.

Your concern is valid, especially on lower-quality or very lightweight denim. This is a simple trick we use in the industry to offer a "controlled chaos" look. It gives you the full aesthetic of a raw hem with the structural integrity of a finished one. It's the best of both worlds.

The process is straightforward. First, cut your jeans to your desired length as we discussed before. Then, thread a sewing machine with a thread color that matches your jeans (or a contrasting one for a design detail).

Sew a single, straight stitch running horizontally all the way around the leg, about a half-inch to an inch above the raw edge you just cut. Now, you can wash, dry, and fray the hem as much as you want.

The threads will unravel beautifully right up to your stitch line and then stop. This ensures your jeans maintain their length and structure over time, giving you peace of mind while rocking that edgy look.

How to create a distressed hem on jeans?

A simple, straight raw hem isn't enough for you. You want a more dynamic, heavily worn, and destroyed look at the ankle that looks genuinely vintage and full of character.

Create a truly distressed hem³ by combining multiple techniques: cut the hem asymmetrically (a "step hem"), attack the edge with sandpaper and a wire brush for texture, and use tweezers to pull threads to varying lengths.

This is where you can get really creative. Distressing is about creating variation and telling a story. A straight line is clean, but a jagged, textured line shows history.

One popular high-end look is the "step hem⁴." To do this, you simply cut the front of the hem about an inch shorter than the back. This creates a cool silhouette that highlights your ankles and footwear.

After making your initial cut (whether straight or stepped), it's time to add texture. Take some coarse sandpaper and a wire brush and rough up the edge. Don't be gentle. Create softer spots and rougher spots.

Then, use your tweezers or a seam ripper to pull out threads, but don't do it evenly. Pull some threads out almost completely to create long, stringy danglers, and leave other areas with just a short, fuzzy fray.

The goal is to make it look like the jeans have gone through years of hard wear. This combination of an uneven cut and varied fraying creates a deeply authentic, custom-distressed look that can't be bought off the shelf.

Conclusion

Making a raw hem⁵ is the simplest way to update your jeans. From a clean cut to a fully distressed edge, you can create a custom look in minutes that perfectly reflects your personal style.

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