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I feel like I’ve seen so many scary jeans lately. Not scary as in bad, scary as in ‘face down the bus driver, I promise I don’t feel like a twat in these’ jeans. Super cool, but not necessarily suitable for every occasion.
All this exposure to the fashion future of jeans has made me long for nice, easy, blue denim. It's always easier to pick up on the extreme, and get excited by the new. I flip between being someone who secretly wants a pair of mega-ripped jeans to go with my horizontal stripe mohair knit grunge jumper (which I don’t have yet), and the girl who bought a pair of slightly carrot-fit chinos yesterday from H&M, and is wearing them with a blue shirt. As in, am I willing to dress crazy, or do I just end up dressed like a Gap commercial?
So, there'll be two days of Summer shopping, and day one will be nice, blue, classic, chic. Day two, well still nice, but perhaps not suitable for Sunday lunch with the in-laws. And it's not warm yet in England, so apart from a couple of pairs of shorts, I'm definitely not at the stage where I understand the purpose of a denim mini skirt.
Not for real people, but so sexy & cool. Acne.
I just want to find a great denim shirt. I don't think it exists. This looks close. Acne.
Acne.
Should be worn cuffed. Acne.
I've been looking at these for a few months now, and I finally think I love them. Acne.
Always! Current/Elliott.
The H&M Squin fit in rigid denim (i.e. not stretch) has this kind of fit, but H&M doesn't do photos, so this is the expensive version. Current/Elliott.
I am not sure whether these are kinda tacky, but I think I love them. Anything that makes me think of 1960's San Francisco wins. Goldsign.
Little bit of a cheap-looking wash on the whiskers and the honeycomb perhaps? Current/Elliott.
I have been seeing a return to painted illustrations in advertising, like the old travel posters for Wales or the Lake District, or Enid Blyton book covers. I love this kind of picture, it never gets old.
I'm off to New York in a few days and I hope these look as good in person as they do in this picture. Madewell 1937 ex-boyfriend shorts.
Hello readers from the denim industry!I have a favour to ask.Indigo Slims has never been about what I do everyday, it's a purely creative outlet to catch the overflow from the everyday.
But, I thought that it might be interesting to include a little of what I'm working on, and ask for some information in return.
The 'what I'm working on' means, for the purposes of this, a denim line that I'm developing with my very talented mother. And by denim I mean denim fabric, not jeans. For me, it's one of the most rewarding things I do, working with a niche denim mill and developing the fabrics in line with trend, fibre innovations, new finishes, yarn counts, slub lengths, new shades, coatings, I could go on! You get to learn, you have to really anticipate the market, you get to impact on someone's business in a very real way, you have to know your shit.
My mum has 'previous' with mills in India. 12 or so years ago she joined Arvind Mills, and took them from a mill that sold within India to the international behemoth they are today. Similarly, 6 or 7 years ago, she did the same with Raymond Denim.
Well, our lovely niche denim mill wants me to help bring their denims to a wider audience. Specifically the USA, but as I'm based in London, I'll detour to the UK if anyone's interested! (Also, happy to go to nice cities - I'd love a few days in Stockholm/Copenhagan/Oslo/somewhere in Italy perhaps - it's summer soon - but the main focus is the US.)
So, to all the industry lurkers on Indigo Slims, I'd love the opportunity to come and show you the denim line we've built. There are some CRACKING denims. The mill is in India, and I say niche as it's not a leviathan in terms of production (25 million metres a year). Price is good - not bargain basement, but not Japanese prices. I've said it before and I'll say again, I'm not a denim snob. I've designed jeans with denims from Italy, Turkey, Japan, Pakisatan, Hong Kong. The point is the passion of the mill and the developer. We all know denim has a personality, and that comes from the man at the loom, not the country the loom is in.
So, my e-mail's at the top left of the blog - just click on the 'VIEW MY COMPLETE PROFILE' , contact/email and give me your company details if you want to see a great new denim collection, and AW10/11 denims & trend presentation can be yours, and a trip to the US can be mine.
So yesterday was Paris (naturellement), and Denim P.V. When you haven't been to a trade fair for a few months, the shock of an outdoor d.j. at 10am on a work day is as fresh as the first time. It's not, and never will be, a cool thing to go to a trade fair, so the idea of recreating an Ibiza-style 'chill out' area remains mysterious to me. And it's not 1996 anymore either. With that out of the way, I really like Denim P.V., and I wish more mills would show than do at the moment, and not just denim mills but mills that do some denim, and some other interesting wovens, like japanese double cloths & checks, and indigo knits, and a couple of interesting jersey mills & treated wovens. Not too big, not too small.
What's also amazing is you can pretty much photograph anything, which is unheard of at trade fairs generally. Although the lighting is so moody you're not sure what you're going to get. I attempted to photograph some of the ubiquitous Martelli installation and I'll post some pictures here, along with a summary of what was jumping out in terms of wash & shade trend, in a few days.As a brief teaser: lots of PP/bleach and dirty tint to create yellowed, aged, hobo washes. Lots of repair on rips. Lots of coloured wefts, either tub-dyed or fabric overdyed, in greys, indigos, blacks, browns, and dark orange looking particularly cool. Earth tone denims (khaki, burgundy, brown). Black & waxy resin coatings. Lots of lighter blues, even though technically everyone's showing AW10/11 fabrics. Some great looking left hand twills. Classic low tension cottons/oe look yarns to create classic 3x1 lumpiness/marbling. Denser, stiffer hands on tighter constructions. Still some great lightweights around, for bottoms & shirts.
Finalement, the freebies. Thank you Tavex for my very chic bandana, it's just what I wanted.
It might interest you to know that my highest visitor numbers are for my post on the jegging. Certainly it's fairly disappointing that my lovingly crafted sketchbooks, inspirational and authoritative trends and wistful musings on vintage Americana are passed over in favour of knitted jeans-look leggings. I'm sure jeans themselves feel the same way.
However, I have decided to bow to popular demand and give a run-down of the current available jeggings from the UK, including styling & fabric composition. I am not sure which are the best fitting, but I do know that I haven't seen that many pairs on the street that look good, apart from yesterday when a girl was wearing what appeared to be a woven jegging with orange jeans stitching where there are normally pockets & seams. They looked pretty cool, but I think it's because a woven fabric just looks a bit cooler anyway, there's some wash effects at the seams etc.
I am also willing to bet that the UK is the world centre of the jegging. It's just that we love the combination of trendy and unflattering that this trend seems to promise.
Your decision is basically between a woven fabric (a super stretchy lightweight denim) 'pull on' jean, or a legging made with denim-look jersey. I would council people to go for a super-stretchy woven fabric rather than a knitted denim-look jersey, if only because the denim jerseys look really hairy, and you know you are going to look back on it with that awful sinking feeling of regret you get when remembering past fashion mistakes.
But what I think would be best is maybe a dark denim jersey with some kind of resin or cire coating, to give a edgy cross between the leather-look legging and the denim-look legging (hey, I say edgy, others say terrifying mutant cross breed). I think the coating would add a bit more structure to the jersey and you'd start to get the 'fashion wrinkles' that make jeans so flattering.
Anyway:
Asos has the 'Kate' jegging, which are pretty much all 85% cotton, 13% polyester, 2% elastane. There are a couple (grey & printed) which are 98% cotton, 2% elastane. I am going to go out on a limb and say they are made from woven fabric, based on what I can tell from the zoom.
They do them in black, indigo, vintage blue, grey, acid wash, cropped length and printed with roses.
TopShop.
They have a printed jean-look legging, which is an acid wash look, like a photographic transfer of a jean, and made, interestingly, out of slinky viscose: 94% Viscose,6% Elastane. Their denim-look leggings are jersey, and 96% Cotton,4% Elastane. Dare I call these the classic jegging? They also have something called an Indigo knitted Tregging, 85% Cotton,10% Polyester,5% Elastane, with back pockets.
River Island, Urban Outfitters - both good places to go, both have good websites, forgive me if I've run out of steam a bit with picture editing. We'll save that for the third update.
I feel like we need a new vocabulary to describe the profusion of rip types we're seeing on jeans.Ultra-destroy
Repeat slashing
Holes
Oversized damage
Personalised destruction
Clean cuts
Scratching
Multi-Slashing
Feathered wefts
Horizontal slashing
New patchwork
Linear destruction
Meadham Kirchhoff
Not for real people, but so sexy & cool. Acne.
I just want to find a great denim shirt. I don't think it exists. This looks close. Acne.
Acne.
Should be worn cuffed. Acne.
I've been looking at these for a few months now, and I finally think I love them. Acne.
Always! Current/Elliott.
The H&M Squin fit in rigid denim (i.e. not stretch) has this kind of fit, but H&M doesn't do photos, so this is the expensive version. Current/Elliott.
I am not sure whether these are kinda tacky, but I think I love them. Anything that makes me think of 1960's San Francisco wins. Goldsign.
Little bit of a cheap-looking wash on the whiskers and the honeycomb perhaps? Current/Elliott.
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