Men's Jeans Find a Second Life
Premium-denim brand Kasil Workshop’s founder and creative director, David Lim, has found a creative way to combat unpredictable cotton prices.
Lim turned the Los Angeles–based company’s inventory of unsold men’s jeans into women’s boyshorts and skinny jeans. Rather than having the old jeans sit in the warehouse, Lim decided to reintroduce them as part of the women’s Spring/Summer collection.
“We would cut a certain amount of units, and the smaller sizing wouldn’t sell all the way through, so we could either wait another season to off-price it or workshop it and make it into something fresh and new,” Lim said. “We’re cutting them into shorts, then we’re dyeing them, destructing them and bleaching them out.”
The process proved not only to be costeffective but also allowed for design experimentation.
“If we had a dark men’s jeans, we would bleach out all the color so it’s almost white, then we would re-dye the color, but some of the indigo is still left in the denim, so it has a little two-tone wash to it. Then we cut it and destruct the edges and back pocket with sandpaper to create more fraying or use a Dremel drill for creating destruction and holes.”
Lim used boot-cut and slim-fit men’s jeans from the Fall 2011 collection to convert into women’s styles. Depending on the fit, some of the recycled shorts and jeans required slight alterations in the waistband to work for women.
“A size 29 men’s could translate into a 25 or 26 girls’,” Lim explained.
Dark solids with a few bright colors are the focus of the Spring/Summer 2012 collection, and Lim’s innovative designs bring a more modern rock ’n’ roll look to the denim. The seven different styles of recycled boyshorts come in colors such as Redd Fox, dry wine, Dijon, and deep blues and black, as well as engineer stripes.
“I’m really into making dark shorts for summer, especially dark blacks and blues,” Lim said. “Light is great, but dark will never go out.”
The jeans include a dusty rose-colored skinny jean and a cropped black skinny jean, which retail for $175 to $182. The women’s shorts retail for $125 to $145.
Lim started working in fashion at his father’s Los Angeles tailoring business and launched Kasil Workshop in 2002. In 2009, Kasil joined the !iT Jeans portfolio of brands. This is Lim’s first time recycling apparel.
“It’s a DIY approach to the collection. I wanted it to look like I made this at home,” Lim said. “It’s just fun to take something old and make it new again.” —Deidre Crawford
