CALIFORNIA DREAMING: Customised

Denim is a canvas to be made your own. 

Styles and shapes have change little over the past decades but our love affair continues.  Every little mark and blemish tells a story to be loved and enhanced with painting , stitching and applied accessories.

Live Wyld Designs // Levi's 'Made in California Denim Jacket' // Ft. Lonesome chain embroidery patches

If you cannot do it yourself there are always those who will do it for you. Take your own item and have Live Wyld Designs renovate and re-create using your well loved pieces as a canvas.

Jacket - Live Wyld Designs

Our denims are better when old and used. The touch becomes softer, the blue becomes your adorable friend, the shape is an echo of you so never throw them away.    Cherish these vintage imperfections and make them behave differently over your life. Then pass them onto someone else who can live in them like you.   Your best jeans are your oldest jeans.  Like Rufcut Denim LA your love affair with your denims, unlike the shade, never fades.

 Rufcut Denim // Ft. Lonesome 

From a classic trucker beginning a fashion icon is born.  Pure walking art to be proud of.

Both ourselves and our jackets stoned, when hair was long, free love was the message and music transported us to another place to wear such a customised piece now takes us back to that time and makes us smile.

Images - From 'American Denim' // Anaa Sui ss18 (Right)

CALIFORNIA DREAMING: The Hippy Trail

60's and 70's vintage denims. Low rise hipster Bell Bottoms, shrunk around the body and flared at the ankle.       The body is focus, the memory is of music and Psychedelic trips.   Woodstock and other music festivals promoted jeans and the hippy lifestyle to huge commercial success.  Such festivals today perpetuate the same marriage of fashion jeans and music culture

Images -  'a denim story' 

Crazy patterns, pyjama stripes, giant platforms and cowboy boots are a part of this Sunshine State Festival mood.

images - 'a denim story' // 'American Denim' // 'a denim story' 

Denim is high stretch with long warp threads. The flared shape hanging over the big shoes.

Flares image - 'a denim story'

Light and bright blue denim is everything. It starts simple and classic in shape and style but the end result is personal, funky and fun customised beyond fashion.

Jeans image 'American Denim' 

TREND ALERT - CALIFORNIA DREAMING: Sunshine State

The Sunshine State - the original denim state is where worship of the original and the romance begins again every summer.  It  has become less about new jeans, more about the original and customising carefree fashion from a denim base.  Focus on summer sun doing little or nothing with denims being your only clothing.  That's all you need.

Denim style today should be core basic, sun bleached from light indigos and whites. Easy fits, classic 70's styles ruled by shorts, shirts and skirts.  Vintage inspiration from last century yet modern for the 21st.  Keep it simple with an eye to the original.

Image (right) from 'A Denim Story - Inspiration from Bellbottoms to Boyfriends' 

2x1 featherweight vintage weaves in crisp cottons or linen blends - naturally crushed and creased combines with man style jeans with oversized rolled cuffs in worn and bleached ecrus. 

Images from 'A Denim Story - Inspiration from Bellbottoms to Boyfriends' 

Tops and skirts are wrapped, tied and crushed. Green casted indigos are blends of linen, tencel, ramie and cotton.  Flares, playsuits in lighter weights with comfort stretch, always add a T shirt.  This has been the only summer uniform for decades .

Images 'A denim story' // Stoned Immaculate Clothing 

70's dreamin'.   Pattern blocked denim playsuits and gathered strappy tops.

Stoned Immaculate Clothing

Stonewashing has reverted to a simple process with no degrading or spraying.  Wash down your denims with just stones or heavy machine action.  Reduce the chemicals and get back to basics.

WILD COLOUR: Plastic Colour

Fake texture.  Shiny metallic coatings.  Surreal effects.

Roccobarocco

Wild colour combines with metallic shine creating daytime party wear.  Childlike attraction for all that glitters in the most funky colours and combos.    Styling is jeanswear with the popular trucker jacket in a base of denim with metallic coating being the favourite.   Combine this with shimmering synthetic skirts and shiny stretch skinny jeans.

Funky streetwear is likewise high shine. Not metallic but wet-look PVC.

Sunnei Menswear, Cheap Monday

Functional outerwear is given a contemporary new twist by Sunnel in high shine plastic coating.   Leave it shiny or degrade the surface to a crackle effect to mock a natural leather texture as in this Cheap Monday coated blocked jacket.

Chanel Resort 19

Off tones of primary brights in super head to toe shine makes a brave wild statement.  Not for shrinking violets.

WILD COLOUR: Colour Overworked

Workwear with added haphazard attitude.

Junya Watanabe Collaboration with Carhartt and Levi's S/S18

Trucker and ever popular work style jackets are given a new face with atelier style paint effects.   Junya Watanabe at Comme des garçons demonstrates her super creative style in this collaboration with Levis and Carhartt.     A combination of opposites in the toughness of fabric and rigidity of style with haphazard flamboyance of acrylic and pigment colour having the appearance of happy accident.

Simon Miller S/S18, MSGM S/S18

Jeanswear is fashion wear when overworked with colour and combined with luxe fabrics and print effects.   Why not take a basic garment such as ecru denim and work it into fashion.

Neuw Jeans painted by Dan Vient, Anna Sui, Adam Selman, Calvin Klein 

Printing, painting, coating using blue denim as a canvas - creative grunge.

Heliot Emil, Ashley Williams

Paint techniques in pigment or acrylic applied by brush or sponge of knife puts white onto black and black onto white - the ultimate in colour contrast - the denim garment is truly a canvas for self expression.

WILD COLOUR: Double Denim - Head to toe. Uni colour.

Co-ordination is the name of the game.  Double denim, usually associated with blue is now head to toe bright and brilliant colour.   Primary colours work best but many designers in their rediscovery of real colour in jeanswear are experimenting with hitherto unusual shades.

Weekday, Missguided

Sugar candy colour and quirky baby doll tones.   Such focus on colour means that the base fabric is not necessarily white denim overdyed but plain cotton piece dyed twills with clean faces, soft touch and stretch. 

Vero Moda, Weekday

Sweety and lollipop colours with an almost sticky clarity of tone.

MSGM, Zadig & Voltaire, Johnathan Simkhai

The influence of myriad pinks in nature emphasises the importance of the palette. From fresh and pale to vibrant rich reds and deep crimsons.

TREND ALERT - WILD COLOUR

Flamboyant jeanswear. Fluo and clashing. Expression of Self.

WILD COLOUR: Colour Blocking

Less about the fabric more about the colour.  change the colour of obvious details and emphasise the shape with bold shade combos.    

We try to emulate tropical wild flamboyance where natures clashing tones create a cacophony of colour.

Wild colour changes the look of function and the of era of influence..

Tommy Hilfiger, ASOS

From fashion patches to sporty stripes.  Underlying it all the jeans styling is always there.  Use of different fabric bits and pieces helps the contrast.

Sunnei, Mila Schon, Dolls Kill, Sonia Rykiel

As well as bold blocks snd stripes piecing and patching old blue denims lends quirky character. Take bits of skirts, mix with bits of jeans and jackets creating new shapes and textures. 

Maison The Faux, VFiles

Upcycle and recycle, add pattern and decoration to pull together blocks of texture and tone.

First we de-construct, then we re-construct.  No need to make new, just make new from old. This is where colour is creative and fresh. 

Dussen Dussen

Colour is industrial in its simple geometric boldness and contrast of level and tone.

SLOW DENIM: Faking The Craft

What was once natural wear became created by hand over many hours of scraping, grinding, ripping and repairing in a traditional denim laundry.  Now we have holes, bare patches, wear whiskers and time stains all created with pre-programmed lazer equipment.   This use of modern technology to "fake" the handmade in a cleaner and more efficient is the way of the denim future.

What was once, and shamefully still is, created in a laundry using millions of gallons of waste water is increasingly created by lazer equipment with hardly any loss of precious water at all.

Story MFG

Whatever pattern you desire can be pre-programmed and created without any water at all.

// Michal Gorelick // Sonia Rykiel

Faking the idea of creative crazy denims has never been more easy.  Using machines and grinders to fluff and bloom the cotton edges to achieve art denim on a scale that is usually achieved by laborious hand processes.   Here denim art meets commercial reality.

Ozone technology for denim fabric finishing enables the finishing of broad denim with only one bath of cold water thereby saving gallons of water as well as energy and harmful chemicals.   So, in this case "faking" the craft has a serious environmental benefit.

Levi's Eureka Lab // Yasin Ciçek // Jeanologia

Levi is embarking on a new way of commercially mass finishing their jeans at the same time saving trillions of gallons of water in the process.  Not only can vintage worn areas be reproduced but also fancy patterns can be burnt out of the jean.  All without water!!