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“I was pleasantly surprised,” said McQueen. “What I found was just normal skin flora. The counts were really, really similar. The bacteria load from the swabbed areas were pretty much the same.”

The bacteria counts were highest around the crotch, but McQueen found no E. coli or other kind of bacteria from fecal matter. “I did expect to find something but I was pleasantly surprised not to find something like that.”

This means wearing raw denim for months without washing is likely safe for a normal, healthy person, said McQueen, adding the caution that this is just one unpublished study with one person’s jeans.

She suggests that with normal wear, jeans need only be washed about once a month.

“I think wearing underwear is probably a pretty important thing here if you’re not washing your jeans. I would say (wash) once a month, depending on how long you wear the jeans.

“Not everyone is as rigorous at trying to control odour as (Le) was.”

Wearing raw denim is trendy among some groups of fashion-conscious men, and to some extent, women. It’s common to buy the untreated jeans and wear them six months before washing them to get a personalized look to the wear patterns.

The jeans cost between $100 and $700 —Le bought his Nudie Jeans online for $167.

He had no problems with smell, he said, until he brought them to California for a family vacation seven months into the adventure.

He left them folded in his suitcase for three days, then opened it and gagged. “There was this huge waft of smell,” he said. “It smelled really bad. It was hot and humid, perfect bacteria-growing conditions.”