Trashion - Recent Vintage 90s grunge

August 28, 2017 Jill Lawrence

New/old grunge combines with beautifully contrived designs creating exciting mixes of texture, colour, shape and destruction. All with more than just a nod to our enduring need for high Brands, sport brands and their fashion identity.

Why not write stories and proclaim messages on our everyday clothing? Wear thoughts on our sleeves and ripped up designer legs? Tear and fray holes mended with recognisable brand fabric or imagery.

Classic garments fall victim to the grunge trend - 90's bomber jackets are reinvented in coloured denims complete with ripped authenticity. The belted trench in fake flocked fur. One of the highest fashion exponent of this trend is the super Junya Watanabe, being the original creator behind the use of tartan and denim in new and exciting ways.

Sport meets street with Branding a feature. Mix brands and fuse their identity and messages. Even combine brands to create a new identity and use for both. Combine fabrics, shapes and sizes creating a revival of flea market fashion.

The written messages and icons carved into pigment add many dollars as well as fresh excitement to a classic denim garment. Fleece, hoodies and mixed fabrics characterise the street fashion revival that is regarded as recent vintage.

Gothic revival, meets classic Tartan = super exciting. Combine also the dynamic of clean sport brands and what we get now is a new wave of high and recycled anti fashion the results have "must have" quality.

Trashion - Rough and Tumble

August 21, 2017 Jill Lawrence

So, lets look at finishing of denim and garment outside the realms of tearing them apart. This means adding colour and worn in attitude stopping short of destruction.

What we try to achieve is a garment finish that begs the question - am I an original or a beautiful replica? We employ myriad techniques before dry or wet tumbling of 3D creasing, crushing, tagging, finishing garment edges with grinding and finally zinc oxide tinting and bleaching at strategic points of the garment. Sometimes even experts are fooled!

Unusual textured denim forms a perfect base to create a real worn in vintage garment. Although the 3x1 twill is the original denim fabric followed by the 2x1 lighter variant, piques and dobbies can be made to achieve the appearance of old miners' worn out clothing having become much coveted gender neutral garments in today's world of vintage denim hounds.

Iron oxide finish techniques achieve the original appearance of dirty denim - we take this to a higher creative level of actually burring holes in the garment as well as emulating the effects of scorch marks with black dye or holes to reveal orange weft looking like scorched holes.

Super creative garmenting design with old or new jeans creates new styles, helped by the use of all the rough and tumble, colouring and bleaching effects available to our experimental drive.

Lets use the jean in another context - it's fun, it's denim, it's Trashion!

Trend Alert: Trashion

August 7, 2017 Jill Lawrence

Anti Fashion=fashion=Trashion

Take the jean and trash it. Ripping and shredding continues to fascinate. Accompanied by bleach and paint splashes we use our jeans as a canvas to create our own image.

Composite Image ©TheDenimEye, Front Left ©Fear of God

The denim underneath is masked by surface activity but it is the old style vintage crackle open end denim looks that are most appropriate for our blank canvas. Rigid non stretch denims are the best canvas for destruction - simple cotton with no lycra threads shred more naturally.

Trash fashion is old vintage with attitude. We have fallen in love with old denim and jeans, they are pre-loved, they have history which manifests itself through the rips, tears , fades and tints. Replicating the originals is where today's Trashion began but now we have taken it to new levels of destruction. Massive holes barely held together by loose threads creative bleaching has given new life to dark jeans. Tints will change the original colour of the jean or make it look dirty and well used.

Creative patching has achieved a life of its own bearing no relation to any holes beneath. Use different colours of denim or contrast fabric and threads - add rips on top - keep layering - keep adding interest. Create your own personal craft jeans.

Make shredding a feature of a simple denim shape - both indigo warp and white weft threads combine to create a sustainable "fur" appearance. Embellishment and creative destruction supports huge businesses with many success stories from small time creators alongside the great brands such as Levi' customised tailoring.

90's Grunge reappears mixed with iconic brand identities such as here The Adidas three stripe creates a new sport/street vibe. Art School attitude of old 70's flares plus paint splattered silk and black leather achieves a casual bohemian attitude.