Men’s denim is ready for a season of ease.
Brands have turned to vintage influence, Western roots and coastal cool as inspiration for their Spring/Summer 2026 men’s collections. They’re delivering relaxed styles built for comfort, with looser fits, lighter fabrics and sun-streaked washes dominating the market for next year for a consumer interested in an effortless, easygoing feel. The market has displayed an openness for deviations from the status quo, and brands are counting on nostalgia-tinged, casual-coded styles to keep propelling their men’s businesses.
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Off the Cuff dives deeper into these ideas. In this content series, creatives and executives from crowd-favorite denim brands share more about the trends, ideas and innovation shaping their upcoming men’s collections.
Here, Uwe Kippschnieder, senior denim developer and designer of Closed, describes key fits and washes for Spring/Summer 2026 and how the European brand’s archives is proving a source of stability as the business’ ownership transitions.
On the men’s business: [Men’s] is quite stable, but we’ve seen some growth since about a year [ago]. Our sales in the shops for full price are developing quite well. I [recently] got the news that we see growth on the menswear [side] in the U.S. For our main market, which is still in Germany, it’s steady. We have a few brand shops in Germany that are doing well, and online business is stable.
On fits and washes: We are trying to keep the overall selection for our men’s fits quite tight at the moment, so we have four existing fits that were complemented by just one new fit, which is, for us, also the most fashionable fit. It’s a mix of a five-pocket [style] but with slightly different pocket solutions in the front. It’s not like the regular scoop pocket, but we have more slanted, worker-related pockets, and it’s our widest fit for the denim.
We are continuing a little bit of what we had focused on in winter, which is to play with the casts and with the tinting. We are giving denim a new approach by changing the blues, with sometimes more vintage-related beige tints. We also have a blue denim which we washed down over dyed black, washed again and then tinted with a brown, so there’s a lot of changing the casts by tinting. My favorite [for] summer was a blue denim which we washed and then overdyed with indigo.
On non-jean denim styles: This is, for us, always an important topic in the collection. We like the idea of building suits, which doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s combined with a formal jacket. It can also, as we have it in the [SS26] collection, mean that you have a postal zip-up denim jacket combined with a worker denim shirt, with this new, wider leg jean—and this is all in the same color. The denims we used for shirting come from the same mill; they have the same base color, and we also washed it exactly the same.
On inspiration for S/S ’26: [This] is one of the few collections which does not have a real topic. We were having a look in our archives, which is always quite inspirational for us, especially when it comes to the workmanship and the details. We were pulling some [fit] inspiration from there—and same with some of the wash developments.
On opportunities: I personally hope that the customer will appreciate—even more than he’s doing it right now—the fact that we are making our denim production [more] ecologically friendly. This is something we’ve worked since 2018 on…and when we started, it was very heavily pushed by the mills and the laundries, but also the end consumer, especially the younger ones. For them, it’s not just nice to have, but they are really looking for the jeans, or clothing in general, that is made in a greener way.
This article was published in SJ Denim’s fall issue. Click here to read more.
