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FashionUnited interview with Denim Première Vision

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Denim Première Vision has become one of the international sector leaders over the past 10 years, having adapted in line with the denim industry’s changes and innovations.

It has offered top quality and complementary international know-how since its conception. Now alternately based in Paris and an inspiring European city, we put some questions to Guglielmo Olearo, the new Denim Première Vision Director.

Which stages has Denim Première Vision’s development gone through over the last ten years?

Now multi-community and further from the historical vintage codes, denim has become part of the fashion market’s seasonal nature in terms of product design and development. Launched in 2007, Denim Première Vision has adapted to the changes in an industry which has gone from being a pure player market, with a community of visitors essentially consisting of denim brands which share the same values, to a multiple player market with diversified codes.

The pure players’ market leadership and product innovations have been caught up by the fashion and luxury brands and retailers who have included denim in all their design collections, thereby exploring new aspects of the material. A shorter time to market in the fashion brands, continuous ongoing developments, generalisation of current trends, injections or capsule collections… all these modes of operation now apply to the denim industry, with tighter design and production schedules.

Today, Denim Première Vision is embarking on a new transformation in terms of destination, positioning, scheduling and teams, in order to meet the new requirements of the entire denim value chain and all of its players.

Who are the newcomers in the show’s team and what are their terms of reference going to be?

We have set up a new team for this new project, a real shock duo! (laughs).

Guglielmo Olearo, Première Vision’s International Events Director, is taking over the management of Denim Première Vision from Chantal Malingrey, Première Vision’s Marketing and Development Director.

Fabio Adami Dalla Val, who has been a consultant for Denim Première Vision for several sessions, is taking on the role of Show Manager.

Our mission is to manage the show and support the changes in line with the strategic path we have set out for ourselves. Our respective professional experience and our complementary positions allow us to interact with the world of denim and fashion, bringing fresh ideas which will be incorporated in the new show concept.

We are aware that any change requires time and our first objective is therefore to create trust and closeness, which are so important during a transition period.

Which major challenges will the decision to alternate between Paris and London for the show result in?

Following the Parc Floral event in Paris on 23rd and 24th May this year, we will be investing a great deal of time and effort in the Old Truman Brewery in the heart of East London on 5th and 6th December 2018. The show is becoming an itinerant one and will now be organised to alternate between Paris, the world fashion capital and an influential European fashion city.

The objective of this alternation is to remain close to the fashion and design markets, whilst offering the international sector new places for inspiration. This involves reaching out to all the fashion designers who work with denim in their collections by going to meet them in the European fashion cities where they are established, as well as allowing our international exhibitors and visitors to be inspired by the creative, cultural, artistic and fashion energy in those same cities.

How will this impact the schedule for fast fashion in the denim industry?

It’s more than one schedule; I would say schedules (plural), as each fast fashion brand applies its own design timing. The major impact of fast fashion surely relates to the increasing number of annual collections, as well as the reduced time to market, forcing the denim sector to adapt in terms of organisation, investment and resources. Innovation can now appear at any time of the year.

How has the show managed to replace the products and collections at the heart of its agenda?

Denim Première Vision has offered top quality and complementary international know-how since its conception. A total of 75 exhibitors have been selected from the best specialists in Europe, Turkey and Asia this season. They are textile workers, material and accessories manufacturers, or even designers/washers/finishers.

A new unified stand will promote the exhibitors’ creative developments and innovations in order to reposition the denim product at the heart of the show and a new urbanisation per trade will allow for greater legibility of the offer and an inspirational and more effective simplified purchasing process through reorganisation of the spaces and a new more contemporary set design.

We also decided to put a space dedicated to small quantities in place last November, the Small Minimum Quantity (SMQ), which has been renewed and strengthened this season. This presents clothing and laundry manufacturers from Italy, Morocco, Portugal and Turkey, who are capable of combining speed, flexibility, technical know-how, proximity and services. They have the ability to produce flexible volumes.

The objective in recent years has been to respond to new fashion and denim players in the market, the young designers, the niche brands or pure players on the Web who now include denim in their capsule collections or several items in their ready-to-wear lines.

What do you mean by the term “urbanisation” in the denim trades?

We have rethought our exhibition world with a greater educational and legible focus on the trades, as well as our fashion tools offering seasonal inspiration, analysis and orientation: the Denim Trends Area – our trend space – will be both inspiring and future-focussed, in particular as a result of our unprecedented collaboration with the designer Lutz Huelle.

Our objective is to make each visit more effective and to practically guide our visitors in the design of their denim collections.

How has Denim Première Vision auditioned/identified the professional attempts to reposition itself?

Within the context of making good decisions are developing causal beliefs, it’s important to know how to make effective use of objective and independent studies and analyses and to validate these with feedback from the main market players. That is how we have managed to identify and formalise the foundation for the development of our show, in order to meet today’s and tomorrow’s Denim expectations.

Which steps have the show’s organisers taken to inspire contemporary denim?

We revisited our fashion tools and areas to address the diversity of denim players and to offer them greater support with the design of their collections.

This is the first time we have opted to collaborate with a fashion designer, Lutz Huelle, for the Denim Trends Area trends forum. His hybrid and “decontextualised” vision of clothing has inspired new types of denim combined with new materials and has gained new markets.

From an inspirational viewpoint, Lutz Huelle will be exhibiting items from his collections in the heart of the Denim Trends Area, which echo the five 2019-2020 Autumn–Winter season themes, developed with the show’s fashion team. Fabrics, finishings and dyeing produced by a selection of exhibitors will be exhibited, mirroring Lutz Huelle’s items in order to illustrate the main seasonal orientation and denim’s fashion vision through the different materials.

A selection of products and know-how from some of the show exhibitors - fabrics, accessories and components, design / washing / finishing – will also be presented and arranged based on the 5 main seasonal orientations, with a more future-focussed purpose and to serve as support for the brands with compiling their denim collections.

We are also organising 2 fashion seminars, the Denim Trend Tastings, recast to adapt to the denim and fashion market’s new needs. An inspirational seminar, organised by the show’s fashion team in collaboration with Lucia Rosin from the Italian design studio Meida, will offer the main themes for the 2019-2020 Autumn–Winter, the fashion orientations, materials, washings, finishings… and the trends in terms of outlines and shapes. An analysis seminar with Alexandra Van Houtte from the Tag Walk site will present analyses from the most recent shows, the good denim products and the development of collections.

What about eco-responsible denim? Which solutions have been proposed to show visitors in this area?

Eco-responsibility has become a real competitive advantage and represents new added value for the fashion industries. It is also a challenge the denim industry needs to rise to and is one of the most advanced in this field. We have promoted the incentives and innovations of our exhibitors in this area since the launch of the show and have watched these grow.

We are introducing a special area for this latest Denim Première Vision event, within the context of what we are doing in our first Première Vision Paris show with our Smart Creation platform, dedicated to responsible design and production: the Denim Smart Square. This will feature a Smart Library, offering the latest developments and innovations in terms of eco-responsible denim through 15 products and innovations – materials, washings, finishings - derived from the exhibitors’ collections. There will also be a Smart Wardrobe, exhibiting the creativity of sustainable denim through a selection of finished products, produced with responsible sourcing and production. A Smart Talk conference will also present the latest initiatives in terms of eco-responsible denim.

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