LOS ANGELES — As jeans trend from embellished and distressed to clean and sleek, wash houses here must adapt their processes.
But the transition is typically seamless, said owners of denim laundries in the premium market. If anything, the change is welcome, they said.
“People were putting so many things on their denim pants that it was all over the place,” said Shaul Shaul, president of Complete Garments, an 80,000-square-foot wash and dye house in Los Angeles. “Now, it’s actually easier because we can focus on doing things more naturally.”
During the past couple of seasons, the look that had come to define denim changed dramatically. Heavy embellishments, vintage techniques, grommets, rips, tears and whiskers have given way to jeans that are almost devoid of any of that. As a result, the focus has shifted to color and on the quality of the fabric.
“Washes are really going to a very different direction from the past,” said Adriano Goldschmied, founder of the denim line named for him and also the owner of his own two-year-old wash facility, Laundry Atelier, in Los Angeles. “In the past, it was all about handwork and holes, and washes were very vintage-looking. Today, it’s totally different, and [it’s] really about showing the beauty of the fabric and having the jean look like more of a luxury product.”
Goldschmied recently invested about $300,000 in new equipment for the washes. However, he said the newfound cleanliness of the fabric can be deceptive.
“In some ways, it doesn’t mean the process is easier because there is obviously still a lot of work,” Goldschmied said. “Clean doesn’t mean we don’t do anything. It means that we are making processes that are completely different from the past, that we have to put washes on top of the garment to make it shiny, and that a lot of work goes into the finishing.”
Goldschmied described his laundry as “development-oriented,” adding that the key to success in the premium denim end of the market lies in “innovation and product development.” He agreed with other denim industry insiders that the high end has softened recently after a spate of new brands flooded into the market. In the past year, that has led, inevitably, to attrition. Some of the newcomers folded as quickly as they appeared. Although laundry operators said that hasn’t affected the bottom line, it has made for a more competitive environment.
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“In some ways, it was expected,” Goldschmied said. “I had been predicting that one day or another, the gold rush would be over. Customers are much more selective, and buyers don’t want to have 30 denim brands in the store, instead focusing on the ones that are working.”
An outgrowth of that is the trend toward color, executives said.
Georges Atlan, chairman of Pride Jeans, a Vernon, Calif.-based company that manufactures for top denim names such as Rock & Republic, Guess Jeans and Calvin Klein Jeans and which has its own production and washing facilities, said blue would remain key in denim until next summer.
“The new treatments we are using right now are a rinse with a resin on it to make sure the blue stays blue,” he said. “That’s the basic process we have until next spring and summer.”
After that, Atlan predicted, denim sections of stores will be filled with color, a transition that won’t require too much innovation at the washing level.
“There’s too much blue at the stores right now, so it will be more about color,” he said. “For a typical laundry, there’s nothing really to invest in, in that case. Over the past five years, we’ve had to develop so many different kinds of processes, but now it’s really about color — pastels and brights. It’s all about clean.”
Complete Garments’ Shaul, who works with high-profile denim brand Jelessy that’s designed by his brother, Steven, said upcoming collections will feature more than 60 different colors.
“There really is a return to clean, natural-looking pants in different colors,” Shaul said. “It’s like if you buy real blue denim and start washing it at home, the way it’s going to look in six months is what we’re doing now. We’re very busy with our color division and believe that as the premium market goes down, mid-range jeans will be very strong.”
Executives agreed that the look in washes was going to be reminiscent of the Eighties.
“That’s what people seem to want right now,” Shaul said.
Alain Lafourcade, a Los Angeles-based consultant who develops washes for companies such as Hudson, said the better laundries will use organic dyes and different resin and ozone processes, which help impart a “shiny and soft look.”
“Wash houses can do that easily because they used to do a clean wash before everything got crazy,” Lafourcade said. “Now they can go back to what they used to do, where the beauty of the denim is because it’s clean and not flashy.”
Look for pale grays, blues and light browns for next spring, Goldschmied said.