Denim: On Trend for 2010

It’s 2010, and denim is every­where. Ripped, stained, bleached, wrin­kled, patched, dyed, and embell­ished. It seems that the design­ers are up for try­ing every new tech­nique they could think of on this sta­ple fab­ric. Both heavy exper­i­men­ta­tion and stick­ing with the untouched clas­sic blue jean are impor­tant looks this year.

Denim is becom­ing more for­mi­da­ble, mov­ing beyond the con­fines of pop cul­ture.  Today, peo­ple are wear­ing jeans for every occa­sion. Take Steve Jobs of Apple for exam­ple, he is not seen in any­thing but blue jeans and black turtle­neck for every new Apple intro­duc­tion. The Wall Street Journal took note of this “Power Jeans” trend within high-ranking busi­ness and polit­i­cal cir­cles. It has become appro­pri­ate to wear jeans in business.

Among the var­i­ous den­ims we saw on the run­way, the very dark, almost black dyes would tran­si­tion well into a busi­ness look. When we need to look pro­fes­sional but want the func­tion­al­ity and dura­bil­ity of a pair of dun­ga­rees, we dress our denim up by throw­ing on a blazer, a but­ton down, and a pair of boots.

We have been see­ing some refresh­ing and rich new indigo washes on the run­way (Gaultier, Marc Jacobs, and Burberry Prorsum). We also saw some inter­est­ing greys, and extremely faded, almost white hues (Acne, William Rast, Boy by Band of Outsiders). Some design­ers went a step fur­ther, exper­i­ment­ing with dyes that were Crayola-esque (Louis Vuitton).

With many now on a bud­get due to the eco­nomic cli­mate, focus­ing on updat­ing a sta­ple wardrobe piece seems to make sense. You can see the design­ers are hav­ing fun play­ing with this clas­sic tex­tile. Marc Jacobs dyed, bleached, and frayed his looks for Louis Vuitton, and even embossed the LV logo into the fab­ric. Jean Paul Gaultier tried new sil­hou­ettes, over­alls and bustiers with Madonna-inspired built-in cone bras, while D&G was all about the ripped, ruf­fled, and rus­tic (they intro­duced an inter­est­ing brown wash seen through­out the collection.)

Some design­ers decided to go denim head to toe: Shirts, dresses, skirts, jack­ets, bags, even shoes, were spot­ted in the tex­tile. Some of these ensem­bles were in match­ing fab­rics, but most were com­posed of mixed denim col­ors, often ren­dered in a sort of a patch­work bohemian look, some­what rem­i­nis­cent of the 80’s.  In the 1980’s denim was a leg­endary muse in the design world.  It was a great source of artis­tic exper­i­men­ta­tion and there was lit­tle that wasn’t done with the mate­r­ial.  With the explo­sion of inno­va­tion we’ve seen this year with this fab­ric, well, what can we say?  Looks like it’s com­ing around again.

Katherine Tyznik. HighStreet. New York