Isko’s Fatma Korkmaz: “The denim industry needs a designer or a high-profile brand to take the plunge”

The Denim Première Vision trade show, held in Milan on November 26 and 27, attested to the growing complexity of finishes and materials in the world of denim. Fatma Korkmaz, product development director at Sanko Group’s Isko, the Turkish denim giant, shares with FashionNetwork.com her analysis of a denim market that is returning to wider, simpler cuts while demanding ever greater technical sophistication.

FashionNetwork: After a decade of slim and skinny jeans, how are denim manufacturers adapting to rapidly changing demand?

Fatma Korkmaz: In terms of trends, we’re seeing heightened expectations around materials and their construction. Until quite recently- around two years ago- manufacturers were asked for little more than highly elastic, body-hugging fabrics. Today, the market is reverting to more rigid denim with more comfortable cuts. But this shift is also accompanied by heightened demands for finishing options as well as colour ranges- demands that didn’t apply to this more rigid-jeans category when brands had just one style per collection. What defines the market today, therefore, is a pursuit of ever more sophisticated finishes applied to denim with more classic cuts. And that holds true across all price points.

FNW: Including in the luxury market?

FK: It’s important to look at premium and luxury brands, because they strongly influence the whole sector. And indeed, we’re seeing a growing number of jeans on the catwalks, with increasingly bold finishes and cuts that hark back to the 2000s. As a result, all the new finishing techniques we’ve introduced have met with almost immediate success in the last two seasons. It also shows there has been a shift in the perception of denim since Covid: consumers are buying less. By contrast, very simple, “easy” pieces are less likely to persuade them to buy. This affects all brands. That’s why we’re backing a range of fabrics with multiple properties.

FNW: So cuts are going back in time, while adopting new technologies?

FK : Yes, though we’re no longer talking about the exact same pieces as back then. You can also see that brands aren’t jumping in straight away; they’re hesitant, preferring to wait for the right moment to try things that are truly surprising and creative. Perhaps the denim sector needs a designer or a high-profile brand to dare, take the plunge, lead from the front, and spark a new kind of enthusiasm for denim among consumers.

FNW: So there needs to be a “new Diesel,” which changed the way denim was seen in the early 2000s?

FK: At the time- as industry professionals will remember- whatever the brand did had an impact on the entire market, bringing to the fore new innovations and manufacturing challenges for apparel and materials.

FNW: In this respect, how do you analyse the changing role of materials in the industry?

FK : What’s clear to me is the growing importance of recycled materials. The feasibility has now been proven. All Isko collections now rely, to varying degrees, on recycled materials. Moving away from virgin cotton also allows us to better refine the product’s softness, which has become an important expectation, even on pieces with a raw appearance. In this respect, Gen Z is rather contradictory: it wants pieces that are distinctive, unique and complex, yet at the same time simple and comfortable. And talking to them about recycled materials can sometimes work against the product, as some see it as a compromise on quality. Our collaboration with Rihanna was, in this respect, very important in demonstrating what can be achieved with recycled materials.

FNW: What does this transition to recycled materials mean for a company like Isko?

FK: It means increasing our capacity to collect and recycle materials, whether production offcuts or post-consumer products. We therefore plan to install dedicated units, in the form of hubs, close to our manufacturing sites. These hubs will be devoted to the defibration and decolourisation of materials. This is a large-scale project.