The latest edition of Kingpins New York ended a successful two-day run in Manhattan last week and featured several new attractions and areas for denim aficionados to meet and investigate the latest happenings with the fabric.
Held once again at Pier 36 on the Lower East Side, the show had about 65 exhibitors including denim mills, laundries and fiber producers including major players such as Candiani, Cone Denim, Invista, Lenzing and Supima and numerous smaller ones mostly from Asia.
New on the show floor was the Kingpins Curiosity Shop, a retail area where visitors could purchase unique denim finds and items created especially for the show, a denim repair area with DenimRepair.com and Loren Manufacturing, and Kingpins Creatives, a space for individual specialists who will “stimulate the industry of tomorrow” such as denim designer/consultant Godmother NYC (aka Christine Rucci) and Michelle Branch, creative director of Markt & Twigs, a creative marketing firm that specializes in the denim sector. Also on hand in that area was Myr, a recently launched state-of-the-art CAD software system that allows the creation of high-def photolike designs from sketches and can interconnect all who are involved in the supply chain. An annual subscription to this game-changer, which basically creates virtual samples efficiently and easily, is €10,000.
New advances and products were also being spotlighted by the bigger brands at the show. Lenzing promoted its new Refibra lyocell fibers, which are created from recycled cotton and wood pulp, by showing a capsule collection designed by Adriano Goldschmied. Lenzing has already worked with eight denim mills worldwide on applying the new fiber to denim and has just announced a new partnership with premium jeans brand DL 1961, which will create garments using Refibra for its pre-fall 2018 collection.
Mexico’s Global Denim, meanwhile showed its eight product categories: Allways (four-way stretch), Warp’d (warp only stretch), RealSoft (Tencel fabrics), Powertek (Lycra fabrics), B-Touch (brushed fabrics), Stretch’d (stretch denims), Rigids and Ecolojean (waterless production). Company rep Anatt Finkler said that people’s interest in the Tencel group was a kind of “anti-trend” against being unable to feel sensory pleasure in an increasingly virtual and online world. “It’s all about the senses,” she noted.
Speaking of trends and anti-trends, Kingpins also featured live trend presentations and a trend-area display by Amy Leverton of Denim Dudes. Her four key themes for the season were Boutique Bazaar (Middle East inspired looks), Summer Goth, Denim Dads (more normcore) and Corporate Craft (artistic workwear).
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For more information on trade shows check out DFV Group’s expocheck.com.
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