California Apparel News

Kingpins—the boutique denim trade show with editions in New York, Los Angeles and Hong Kong—is putting its Los Angeles show on hiatus until July while it concentrates on launching its newest show in Amsterdam.

“We put LA on a pause,” said Kingpins founder Andrew Olah, who said the show will return to the Cooper Design Space in Los Angeles for its July 29-30 run.

Kingpins’ Amsterdam show will debut May 7–8 at the Westergasfabriek Amsterdam’s Gashouder, a former industrial site that now hosts cultural events. The show is working with Dutch foundation House of Denim, which will, at the same time, host a four-day celebration of denim called Denim Days. The first two days will be focused on the business-to-business side of denim with the Kingpins trade show. The following two days will include consumers with business-to-consumer events such as pop-up shops, laser-finishing workshops, a vintage market, and parties and events for “denim lovers, addicts and pros,” said House of Denim’s Mariette Hoitink.

“It would be my dream to have something similar in 2015 in LA,” Olah said.

Hoitink was recently at the Kingpins New York show, where she hosted Indigo Embassy, an outreach program designed to highlight House of Denim’s mission to promote denim innovation and sustainability. House of Denim recently launched Jeanschool, a three-year educational program in denim development. “We are super-connected to the industry. We work with the mills, the laundries—[the students are given] training with real skills in the industry,” Hoitink said.

The group also plans to open a research-and-development lab in the future.

“[In The Netherlands,] the density of denim brands is the biggest in the world,” Hoitink said. “We’re not the biggest [brands], but we have so many companies.”