MANUFACTURING
Cotton Citizen to Bring Burst of Color to Jeans
Since 2012, the Los Angeles–based Cotton Citizen brand has made a business of dyeing T-shirts and other high-end basics in bright and unique colors. Now the company will extend that color palette to jeans.
Cotton Citizen recently introduced a denim program, said Adam Vanunu, the brand’s founder and creative director. “These are colors people are not used to having on bottoms—burgundies, ruby reds, military greens, oranges, bright yellows,” he said.
The brand had been selling its tops for men and women in high-end boutiques such as Ron Robinson and its own store, which it opened on West Hollywood’s Melrose Place in 2016. Vanunu said that the brand had developed a unique look in styles completed by other brands’ jeans. He forecast that Cotton Citizen patrons will be open to the brand’s specific take on jeans. “It’s not a color conversation. It’s a brand conversation,” he said.
For the debut Holiday 2017 line, Cotton Citizen offered a jacket and two jean silhouettes for women and one jean for men. The bottoms have an updated vintage style. Along with the wide range of colors, Cotton Citizen also will offer classic black colorways for jeans and a light-blue vintage wash. Retail price points are $295 for bottoms and $325 for jackets. The Cotton Citizen denim collection of blue and black jeans is currently available. Yellow and cobalt-blue jeans are available for pre-order and will be released around Thanksgiving.
Vanunu guaranteed that the brand is no novice when it comes to denim. Vanunu also runs American Dyehouse, which has worked with premium-denim brands such as J Brand, Hudson and Paige. Cotton Citizen’s jeans are made in Los Angeles.
While the denim business has given the fashion world a myriad of nuanced indigo colors for the past 60 years, brightly colored is still something of a novelty. Los Angeles’ Cross Colours brand designed brightly colored denim in the 1990s. Other brands such as Current/Elliott, Kate Spade and juniors line Celebrity Pink have also worked with color.
The denim consumer is open to bright color, said Vince Gonzales, a career denim salesman and currently brand manager USA for Edwin, a Japanese denim brand that has experimented with bright colors.
“People like anything that is different and new. That’s what buyers are looking for—not just for color but for detail and wash,” he said.
