Blue World
When Jason Ferro was preparingto launch his new denim brand, Bread, he knew he had to make it stand out from the crowd of existing premium brands. To do that he needed to start with unusual fabric, and for that he went not to Japan or Italy, but to Turkey.
“I think Turkey is doing some of the most innovative finishing,” says the designer, “combining some of the most interesting yarn characteristics along with the dyes themselves.”
Ferro knows his denim: Before founding Bread, which launches this Spring season, he worked stints at Levi’s and Guess, where he was denim director. Ferro says the denim currently coming from Turkish mills is among the best he’s ever seen. “Turkey is definitely giving Italy and Japan a run for their money,” he says.
Though Los Angeles is widely considered the world’s denim capital, its reputation relies primarily on designing, washing, and trendsetting. For the actual manufacturing of denim fabric, Italy and Japan are often thought to have the choicest fabrics.
Is it just hype, or are international mills really beating the United States in the production of the most quintessential American fabric?
Though about half of Ferro’s denim is sourced domestically, he relies on Turkish suppliers like Orta and Isko for the more fashion-forward items in his collection. “Most of my line is more sophisticated, so I wanted to use non-traditional denim,” he says. Not only are Turkish fabrics more innovative, he claims, but they’re also less likely to be knocked off immediately. “Right now the market is saturated with a lot of the samelooking denim. If you’ve got new and innovative techniques in the finishing and the dyeing process, it takes longerto be copied and you look fresher in the market. “Denim makers in L.A. are always looking for the newest and freshest fabric,” he adds, “something new in the market to generate business.” Bread consists of men’s and women’s updated basics, with jeans retailing from $180 to $250.
Turkey’s denim mills are generally larger than those in other nations, Ferro says, giving them greater production capacity. As a result, Turkish mills can fill his orders faster than similar ones in Italy and Japan. However, because of shipping and importation fees, he pays $1.30 per yard more than he does for domestic denim.
Dream Weaves
Some designers have been forced to source overseas after finding domestic denim didn’t fit their needs. Emil Rutenberg co-founded EDJ Denim Purist in spring of 2006 with a focus on denim with vintage-looking dry wash, for which he used Japanese and Italian denim. “We did try local denim, but it didn’t work,” he says. “A lot had to do with the chemical process it had to go through. The denim appeared to not have a tight enough weave. In the end, it’s based on the look and wash that you want.”
The durable denim he found provides “a masculine, rock ’n’ roll feel” to the jeans, while the dry wash “makes the fabric hang with a genuine vintage look.”
EDJ Denim Purist makes jeans for men and women priced at $210 to $260. That higher-than-average price for a premium jean reflects the higher fabric cost: Rutenberg typically pays up to $11 per yard with shipping fees.
“For the denim and cotton industries, the U.S. is capable of producing very good basic stuff,” says Rutenberg, a native of South Africa. “But the more refined stuff, where there’s a little more detail in the yarn or weave and the final product, seems to be at a slightly different level in terms of its finishing. [The Italians and Japanese] are a little more sophisticated. The Italians tend to come up with more variety in terms of finishes— they’re a little more experimental. The Japanese on the other hand are a little more consistent with quality. They tend to be more technically reliable, and they tend to be able to produce a tighter, better-wearing denim.
“Talking in terms of the qualities each has,” he continues, “I tend to think that basic Japanese denim is better for men, because they’re able to wear a harder-wearing, heavier denim. And the Italian denim has a tendency to be better for women, but there’s plenty of crossover.”
Finally, “The Italians and Japanese are a notch above what we’ve been able to produce here in America thus far,” though Rutenberg points out that Los Angeles has “the best design heads in the business.”
If he could find comparable denim in the United States, Rutenberg would gladly buy domestic. “The bestcase scenario for any manufacturer is to not have to bring fabric in from overseas. First of all it’s more cost effective. Turnaround time is quicker. But is it likely to happen? Probably not. Everything is becoming so global right now.”
The Stretch Story
For Paige Adams-Geller, owner of Paige Premium Denim, the source of her fabric depends on the type of jean she’s making. For rigid denim, her favorite comes from the Japanese supplier Kaihara. “It’s a more durable denim that’s non-stretch with a masculine look,” she says. The denim can also withstand distressing: “You can rip and tear and beat it to pieces and give it a good old-fashioned look.”
In that regard, Adams-Geller does not believe that if a designer intends to distress denim then quality is less important. “Poor quality denim will not withstand all the stuff you do to it,” she explains. “The fabric’s weight, the weave and its tightness, the cotton—all of those things come into play when you’re distressing denim.”
But most of Paige Premium Denim, which retails for $170 to $275, is based on stretch denim, which Adams- Geller sources from Italian supplier Candiani. “The Italians have done an amazing job at improving the quality of Lycra, and the weave of the denim is so tight that it stretches without stretching out.”
Suiting the Style
Still, designers find that when it comes to sourcing denim, national origin is irrelevant. “I don’t let the country dictate what I use,” says Ya-El Torbati, who has used Japanese, Italian, Turkish, Tunisian, and American denim for her line, Deener.
Deener launched in fall of 2005, with jeans priced at $170 to $200. Torbati was formerly the founding designer at Yanuk.
Torbati has found foreign denim offers the novelty fabrics she prefers for her line. For the Spring 2007 season, she is using a Japanese denim from Suma featuring a windowpane yarn dye. “It was amazing, and it’s hard to find things like that in the U.S.,” she says. “It just panned out that that’s what I ended up liking and thinking was best for the line.
“There’s so much denim out there that people want to see something different,” Torbati adds. “With so many denim lines, it all starts to look the same even more if the fabric isn’t special.”
Her take on Japanese mills is that “they’re not afraid to do small runs of things that may not be core items.”
For her more basic jeans, Torbati is using Italian denim, which she finds has the right amount of weight, stretch, and other attributes for her needs. The Turkish denim she sources from Orta. “Their stuff is up to par with what Japan and Italy are showing, and with the added plus that I think everything they’re doing now is organic.”
Unlike other brands, Torbati includes the source of her denim on a jean’s fabric label. “Some people are denim aficionados and would appreciate knowing where their denim is from.”
A Denim Primer
Agave’s Jeff Shafer lends a connoisseur’s take on the fabric
In his 14 years as a denim designer, Agave founder Jeff Shafer has sourced the fabric from every place known for it—not only the United States, Japan, Italy, and Turkey, but China, Mexico, India, and South America. They all have their place in the market, he says, just as there’s a customer for a 99-cent hamburger and a $10 one.
“One of the things I noticed when I first started working with Japanese denim was how different it is from even the premium lines offered by American mills,” Shafer says. “Even if they’re using the same yarns, the color, shade, suppleness, character—it’s like wine; it’s that sophisticated.”
Agave is a fabric-driven company as opposed to a wash-driven one, he says. So whereas many denim brands buy just a few fabrics and then focus on different wash treatments, Shafer uses up to 20 different denims in a season, of which about 15 are Japanese, sourced from Kaihara, Suma, Kuroki, Nisshinbo, and Kurabo.
Part of the reason Japanese and Italian denims are so good, Shafer says, is because they don’t have a 150-year history of being workwear as denim does in the United States.
Before the premium craze of six years ago, Shafer explains, U.S. denim was dominated by workwear brands (Wrangler, Lee, Carhart, Dickies, Osh-Kosh), “where the only quality standard they were looking for was strength of fiber.” The small fashion side of the industry was mostly based on jeans that were “ripped, stonewashed, bleached, and acid washed.
“So if you’re going to order your meat charbroiled black, does the quality of the meat really matter?” Shafer asks. “The answer is no. So if you’re going to bleach your denim, beat it to hell, rip holes, spray paint, and shoot it with a shotgun, then it really doesn’t matter what the quality is.”
Since the year 2000, American designers began noticing the denim produced in Italy and Japan, where denim was considered fashion, not workwear. “And it was never fashion at a price: The mass-market denim business is really in the U.S. In Europe and definitely in Japan, denim was always more of a luxury-goods item.” Newly launched premium-denim brands often had no choice but to go with imported fabric because American mills wouldn’t fill orders to a small, unknown brand, Shafer says.
More recently, however, American mills have sought to tap into the premium market because while it represents only a small portion of their volume, “it represents all of their growth.”
Yet in Japan and Italy, “The people who design and develop fabrics for true artisan mills are totally different than the people engineering fabrics for the U.S. market—their point of view, their concerns, their passions, their motivations are all different.”
Shafer does source some domestic fabric from Cone’s White Oak division, which uses vintage looms, calling the denim “interesting and good for the application.”
Though the market is oversaturated at present, Shafer remains optimistic for the future of premium denim—wherever it comes from. “Once you’ve driven a BMW, it’s hard to go back and drive an $18,000 Chevrolet. So the people who’ve been buying and really understand premium denim, they’re never going back.”
Japan’s ’Denim Maniacs’
Denim Tech’s Shinzo Suzuki says America’s vintage looms have been a key to Japanese denim’s success
According to Shinzo Suzuki, Japan’s high quality of denim owes much to the country’s “denim maniacs,” or young fashion trendsetters who demand quality and innovation. Denim maniacs are largely responsible for inspiring Japan’s textile industry to produce selvedge denim on vintage American looms acquired after World War II, says Suzuki, who owns Vernon, Calif.–based wash house Denim Tech and also wholesales Japanese denim.
Though Japan is known for selvedge denim, which is prized by many purists, it is also finding ways to create similar fabrics without relying on vintage looms. “Now Japanese mills can do low-tension weaving with modern machines resulting in a very soft or vintage-like fabric,” says Suzuki.
Japan is also known for its excellent yarn-dyeing techniques, resulting in minimal shade variation, and for its use of high-grade raw cotton. “I may be a bit biased,” says Suzuki, “but I still say that Japanese mills provide more variety in cotton, yarn, weaving technology, and shade control.”
Suzuki sells denim from the mills Kaihara and Nihon Mempu, which specializes in selvedge denim. The fabric doesn’t come cheap: Some denim can run $10 per yard, and because vintage looms produce a narrow stretch of fabric, designers need more of it to make a pair of jeans.
Despite being widely recognized for their quality, Japanese mills aren’t exactly thriving, Suzuki says. The premium craze of the last several years has kept many afloat, but premium denim represents only a small portion of the overall denim market. “It’s a tough time for the mills,” says Suzuki.
