15 Brands Like Imogene And Willie for Heritage Denim
The wash you wanted is gone in your size again. Imogene And Willie cuts denim in small runs in Nashville, 42 women's styles and 50 men's, which is exactly why the chainstitched hems and the Japanese selvedge feel worth it and exactly why the pair you had your eye on isn't there. At $245 to $325 USD, waiting out a restock is a big ask.
We went looking for the other places that make denim this way. We checked all 18 names the older version of this article carried, and three came out. Levi's Vintage Clothing is a Levi's sub-line whose page we couldn't reach behind Akamai, and Nudie Jeans and Buck Mason each had a second section repeating what the first one said. That leaves 15 brands, every one of them with a working checkout and, where the store would show us, a price in US dollars.
Quick comparison:
- Closest to Imogene And Willie: Tellason, Taylor Stitch, Flint and Tinder, RRL. Small-run American selvedge, raw or lightly rinsed.
- Cheapest way in: Gustin from $79, Everlane from $88, Mott & Bow from $119, Levi's mainline.
- Most premium: A.P.C. to $485, AGOLDE to $348, RRL, Rag & Bone at $275.
- Specialist picks: Nudie Jeans for lifetime free repairs, Madewell for stores you can walk into, FRAME and Buck Mason for LA-made fits.
The same 15 picks with prices, in USD, and tier words where a bot wall stopped us reading a figure.
| Brand | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Rag & Bone | $275 on the Logan Wide-Leg Jean | Denim that reads city, not ranch |
| Tellason | $275, every jean in the range | Raw selvedge with no decisions to make |
| Taylor Stitch | $178 to $188 | Organic selvedge at a sane number |
| Nudie Jeans | $195 to $260 | Free repairs for as long as you own them |
| A.P.C. | $265 to $485 | Raw denim you break in yourself |
| Gustin | $79 to $229 | Japanese mill denim at crowdfunded prices |
| Everlane | $88 to $128 on women's jeans | Modern fits without the heritage tax |
| Levi's | Mid-range (site blocked our checks) | The originals, in every fit |
| Flint and Tinder | $228 on the American Reserve Selvedge Jean | US-made denim with a jacket to match |
| Buck Mason | $208 to $278 | California cuts on Japanese loomstate |
| Mott & Bow | $119 to $129 on men's jeans | The cheapest way to try three fits |
| RRL | Premium (site blocked our checks) | Repro workwear with the budget behind it |
| FRAME | $258 to $298 on core styles | LA denim with a European line |
| Madewell | $138 to $158 on women's jeans | Trying on ten pairs in one afternoon |
| AGOLDE | $148 to $348 | Vintage washes on contemporary shapes |
Rag & Bone
Rag & Bone makes the version of this denim that goes to an office. The Logan Wide-Leg Jean is $275 USD, and the women's denim range runs a full grid of rises, from low through high, with a separate Featherweight line for warm months.
The British-founded, New York-run label sits at roughly the same money as Imogene And Willie without the rustic edge. Cleaner finishing, darker rinses, and fits drafted to be worn with a blazer rather than a chore coat.
Sale pricing runs deep here, so check the number twice. Plenty of styles we looked at showed markdowns ending in .50 next to full-price siblings, which means the $275 sticker isn't what everything costs.
Best for: Denim that reads city, not ranch.
Tellason
Tellason sells 12 jeans and every single one is $275 USD. No sale rack on the denim, no tiering by fabric weight, no premium for the heavier cloth. That flat price is the most honest thing about the brand.
The San Francisco label cuts Cone Mills and Japanese selvedge into five patterns, and it names them after people rather than fits. The John Graham Mellor is the slim straight, and it comes in 12.5, 14.75 and 16.5 ounce denim so you pick the weight and keep the shape.
Against Imogene And Willie, Tellason is the purist option. Raw only, no pre-distressing, no washes. You do the fading yourself over a year or two, and the brand runs a hemming and repair service for when you're done.
Best for: Raw selvedge with no decisions to make.
Taylor Stitch
Taylor Stitch is the cheapest organic selvedge on this list. The Democratic Jean in Rinsed Organic Selvedge is $178 USD, the Mariner Jean in Drift Wash is $188, and the whole 10-style denim range sits inside that $10 spread.
The San Francisco brand builds its catalogue around organic and recycled fibres, and it runs a workshop model where you pre-order an unreleased piece at a discount before it gets made. The chore coats and waxed jackets are what most people arrive for.
Fit is the difference from Imogene And Willie. Taylor Stitch cuts closer through the thigh and shorter in the rise, which suits a slimmer frame and reads more contemporary than repro.
Best for: Organic selvedge at a sane number.
Nudie Jeans
Nudie Jeans repairs your jeans for free, for as long as you own them, at its own shops. That policy is the reason to buy here rather than anywhere else on this list, and the Swedish brand has run it since founding in Gothenburg in 2001.
Men's jeans run $195 to $260 USD. The Gritty Jackson regular fit is $195, the Grim Tim slim straight is $220, and the Lean Dean in dry Ohm selvage tops the range at $260. Every pair is 100% organic cotton, which the brand states on its own site.
Nudie shares the wear-it-forever premise with Imogene And Willie and takes it somewhere more systematic. Fits are named and consistent year to year, so once you know you're a Lean Dean you can stop measuring.
Best for: Free repairs for as long as you own them.
A.P.C.
A.P.C. built a following on one pair of jeans. The New Standard is $340 USD, raw, rigid and undyed at the hem, and the Petit New Standard is the slimmer version at the same price.
Men's jeans across the range run $265 to $485 USD. The Paris label keeps the denim plain on purpose: no visible branding, no whiskering, a single leather patch. What you get after a year is the fade pattern your own legs made.
Where Imogene And Willie leans American and worn-in, A.P.C. is French and severe. Straight legs, high-ish rises, and a rinse so dark the first three months look almost formal.
Best for: Raw denim you break in yourself.
Gustin
Gustin undercuts every brand here by running jeans as crowdfunded campaigns. The 75 Okayama Standard, cut from Japanese selvedge, is $149 USD, and the 51 denim campaigns we counted ran from $79 to $229.
The model explains the price. You back a fabric, the campaign funds, the jeans get sewn in San Francisco and shipped weeks later. Nothing sits in a warehouse, so there's no markup covering unsold inventory.
The trade-off is waiting. Imogene And Willie ships you a finished pair today. Gustin sells you a place in a production run, and the rarest Japanese mill fabrics tend to be the ones with the longest queue.
Best for: Japanese mill denim at crowdfunded prices.
Everlane
Everlane is the cheapest full-price denim on this list that still uses organic cotton. The Way-High Jean 2.0 is $88 USD, the Lightweight Loose Wide-Leg is $108, and the High-Rise Slim Bootcut is $128.
The San Francisco brand publishes what a piece costs to make and what it charges, which is the closest thing to Imogene And Willie's shop-floor transparency at a third of the money. Denim is one line inside a much bigger basics catalogue.
Construction is where the gap shows. Everlane's jeans use stretch blends and machine-finished hems, so they won't fade into anything personal. They fit well now rather than better in three years.
Best for: Modern fits without the heritage tax.
Levi's
Levi's is where every brand on this page is quoting from. The 501 pattern, the arcuate stitch, the red tab and the rivet placement all started here in 1873, and the archive is what Imogene And Willie, RRL and half of Japan have been reinterpreting since.
We couldn't read a price. Levi's US site returned a 403 to every request we made, including robots.txt, which is an Akamai bot wall rather than a sign of trouble. Treat the store as live and the numbers as unconfirmed. The mainline sits well below everything else on this list.
What you give up is the finishing. Imogene And Willie chainstitches a hem and sews in small runs. Levi's makes millions of pairs, and the payoff is that you can find your exact waist, length and fit on a Tuesday.
Best for: The originals, in every fit.
Flint and Tinder
Flint and Tinder is Huckberry's in-house label, and its denim comes as a limited run rather than a permanent line. The American Reserve Selvedge Jean in vintage straight is $228 USD, and the matching American Reserve Selvedge Type II Denim Jacket is $248.
The wider catalogue is where the brand lives day to day. Waxed trucker jackets, flannels, 365 chinos at $78 and the ten-year hoodie, all sold through Huckberry rather than a standalone store.
Buying here means buying when it drops. The denim carries a Limited Edition tag, so unlike Imogene And Willie there's no core pair sitting in stock waiting for you to come back in February.
Best for: US-made denim with a jacket to match.
Buck Mason
Buck Mason splits its denim into two prices. The Roper Jean and the Off-Duty Jean are $208 USD each, and the Japanese Loomstate Selvedge Full Saddle Jean is $278.
The Los Angeles brand builds around a fixed uniform: a heavyweight tee, a moto jacket, five-pocket denim, repeated season after season with small changes. Pieces are meant to work together rather than stand out.
The Roper is the closest thing on this list to Imogene And Willie's western silhouette, with a higher rise and a boot-friendly leg opening. Buck Mason finishes it cleaner, so it looks new for longer and takes more wearing to look like yours.
Best for: California cuts on Japanese loomstate.
Mott & Bow
Mott & Bow is the cheapest sensible way to work out which fit you want. Men's jeans run $119 to $129 USD across 87 styles, and the Slim Crosby at $119 is where most people start.
The New York brand sells only denim and a handful of basics, and it uses Italian and Turkish mill fabrics with stretch blended in. Fits are split into slim, straight, relaxed and loose, with a big and tall range of 70 styles that few brands at this price bother with.
You wouldn't mistake these for Imogene And Willie. The fabrics are softer, the finishing is machine-fast, and the jeans are built to feel good immediately. At under half the money, that's a reasonable swap.
Best for: The cheapest way to try three fits.
RRL
RRL is Ralph Lauren's reproduction line, named after the Double RL ranch in Colorado, and it's the most obsessive vintage Americana operation with a corporate budget behind it. Selvedge denim, repro workwear, hand-repaired knits and cowboy boots.
Prices we couldn't verify. Ralph Lauren's site sits behind a PerimeterX challenge that returned a 307 to every request, including the sitemap, so we're citing a tier rather than a figure. RRL sits at the top of this list, above A.P.C.
One thing worth knowing: rrl.com belongs to an unrelated road-survey company, so go through ralphlauren.com. Against Imogene And Willie, RRL chases a specific decade rather than a general feeling, right down to the shuttle looms and the hardware.
Best for: Repro workwear with the budget behind it.
FRAME
FRAME makes its denim in Los Angeles and cuts it like a French label. Le Sleek Straight is $258 USD and Le Slim Palazzo is $298, and the wider denim collection ran 74 styles when we counted.
Fabric is where the money goes. FRAME uses Italian and Japanese mills with a high stretch content, so the jeans hold a line through the thigh without the rigidity of raw denim. The names stay French across every fit, which tells you where the design sits.
This is the least Imogene And Willie brand on the list and it earns its place anyway. Half the denim collection sat on markdown when we looked, so the sticker moves around a lot.
Best for: LA denim with a European line.
Madewell
Madewell prices most women's jeans at $148 USD, with a handful at $138 and $158. The range covers barrel, straight, bootcut and wide leg, plus a separate men's denim line and a published fit guide for each.
Scale is the point. Madewell runs physical stores across the US, so you can try eight pairs in an hour rather than ordering three and returning two. That's the single biggest practical difference from buying Imogene And Willie online.
The denim is softer and more stretch-heavy than anything else here, which is why it fits straight off the rail and why it won't develop the fades a rigid selvedge pair will. Different purchase, and the price reflects it.
Best for: Trying on ten pairs in one afternoon.
AGOLDE
AGOLDE does vintage washes better than anyone at its price. The denim collection runs $148 to $348 USD across 250 styles, with the Harper Straight Jean at $218 and the Low Curve Jean at $238.
The Los Angeles brand works backwards from old pairs, matching the wash, the whiskering and the hem wear, then hanging it on a modern rise and leg. The result looks fifteen years old on the first wear, which is the opposite of what Imogene And Willie sells you.
Nothing on the site was marked down when we checked all 250 denim styles, so the price you see is the price. That's rare in this category and worth something.
Best for: Vintage washes on contemporary shapes.
Where to Start, Depending on What You Want
Pick by the thing that made you like Imogene And Willie in the first place. If it's the raw selvedge and the year of breaking in, go to Tellason at a flat $275 or Gustin from $79 if you can wait for a campaign to fund. If it's the shop-floor honesty about what things cost, Taylor Stitch at $178 gets you organic selvedge for a third less.
If it's the fit rather than the philosophy, spend less and try more. Mott & Bow at $119 and Everlane at $88 both let you buy two pairs for the price of one Nashville-made pair, and Madewell has stores you can walk into.
Two of these we couldn't price. Levi's and Ralph Lauren both blocked our checks at the edge, so the tier words in the table are as far as we'd go. Both stores are live and both take orders.
For more on the brands here, we've written full guides to brands like Buck Mason, brands like A.P.C. and brands like 3sixteen if you want to go deeper on raw denim, plus brands like Everlane for the affordable end.
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Written by
Spencer Lanoue
