Sustainability and New Technologies Drive the Denim Market

MILAN — The search for new technologies and sustainable processes in manufacturing doesn’t seem to stop. For the denim mills, manufacturers and laundries gathered at the two-day trade show Denim Première Vision, it seems it’s the only way to deal with the downturn of volumes and sales of the current year. 

Held in Milan at the Superstudio Più in the Tortona district, the fair welcomed 2,160 visitors and 71 exhibitors from 14 countries. This year, students from fashion and artisanal schools of the territory attended the fair as visitors and exhibitors. The Milan-based Botticino School of Restoration, one of the top schools for restoration at a national level, displayed a laboratory at the entrance of the trade show and held a talk about how women have revolutionized trends in fashion. 

The conferences, all packed to capacity, comprised seven talks, including one on the Middle East market and 16 so-called pitches, a new format to help companies present their innovations of the year.

Exhibitors presented their spring 2026 collections spotlighting trends and discussing the challenges and expectations for 2025.

“There’s no visibility on the market. It’s very difficult for vendors to plan ahead and foresee how the business is going to look next year. According to the fabrics requests from retailers we can only tell that, at least for the first months of 2025, the trend won’t change much,” said the trade show’s director Fabio Adami Dalla Val. 

Andrea Venier, chief executive officer of laundry Officina 39, said the year is closing in line with the budget expectations and that since June 2023 the company has launched new technologies in order to remain competitive in the market and to protect its profitability. Talking about the markets, he said, “We are consolidating the markets in Asia, mainly in Bangladesh. Also there is growth in Pakistan and in the Mediterranean area in countries like Egypt and Tunisia.”

The main news for the upcoming year is the expansion in two big and “difficult” markets, as defined by Vernier, such as Brazil and India. Local production will lead the business in the former market while the latter will be led by a partner of Officina. 

“Since Brazil is a complex market, we have entrusted the lead to a local person with whom we will have direct communication, while in India from January there will be a partner who will act as a local distributor,” stated Venier. 

Tommaso Cumerlato, chief commercial officer of MIC, the textiles company that produces threads and yarns for the fashion industry, believes it will be possible to see a slight recovery in 2025 and that its position in different segments of the supply chain, including knitwear, allows MIC to be steady and not dependent on a single market. Its main market is the Mediterranean basin and Egypt.

The signs of a desired recovery were seen in the collections presented through colors and techniques but mainly on the silhouettes.

Julieta Mercerat, Première Vision’s denim expert, shared that the collections for spring 2026 are expected to be bold, with big volume silhouettes. Also, the artisanal techniques for aging denim and vintage looks, identified as one of the trends, are being fine-tuned, making the garments increasingly luxurious.

“I also noticed that the industry is looking for refreshing looks like cold blues for summer inspired by winter landscapes [and] the different use of blue and indigo as statement colors and not classical and a dark color palette for summer,” said Mercerat.

At Isko, the collection, entirely made of high-quality next-gen fibers powered by the start-up company Re&Up, focused on three main elements: design, garment finishes and comfort. 

The multitouch technology enhanced the versatility of the material creating different styles, from wide-leg to balloon and flare and 3D effects, like whiskers and cracked looks. Vintage-inspired looks were realized by washable finishes that amplify texture, contrast and shine featuring coatings like oxi and proxy and matrix resin-wash effects. Comfort is obtained by a dual-stretch weave between knit fabrics and woven denim. 

Marco Lucietti, director of strategic projects at Isko, said “by combining recycled fibers with advanced fabric technologies, we’re proving that it’s possible to create high-performance, fashionable denim that is kind to the planet. This is just the beginning of what we can achieve through circular fashion.” 

Creative director Paolo Gnutti of Isko Luxury by PG unveiled the company’s first jacquard collection, which included 10 exclusive jacquard fabrics. Dubbed “Born to Amaze,” it paid homage to different eras, styles and materials. Like “Godmather,” a capsule inspired by the ’50s, featuring lightweight indigo fabrics adorned with glitter stripes and flock or “tattoo denim” in which indigo, white, or sulfur-dyed colored base fabrics are decorated with mixed-printing techniques such as corrosion, pigments and more.

Italian garment finishing technology company Tonello bowed its “laser manifesto” collection, which celebrates Italy’s artistic and cultural heritage. Statues and sculptures, paintings and frescoes were designed on the garments thanks to the Laser Lab, on display at the stand and Tonello’s most compact laser with easy plug-and-play installation, launched in 2021. The laser finishing speeds the process of finishing and reduce water, energy and harmful chemicals consumption.

The denim manufacturer Les Mains Bleues, which operates within Li & Fung, the giant in global supply chain solutions, was founded in 2023 and has made the data-driven design and sustainable technologies its strength. With design teams in eight locations like London, Australia and India and product development specialist teams in every production country such as Mexico, Pakistan and the U.S., among others, the company harvests data from runways, e-commerce websites and social media. 

For their spring 2026 collection, LMB presented vintage workwear made with textures like denim jacquard, canvas and a lineup of denim washes in blue, gray and black.

In terms of sustainability, textile and fashion companies are preparing themselves to be ready for the mandatory extended producer responsibility schemes set by the European Commission, which will enter into effect in 2028. 

Officina 39 displayed three new responsible chemical innovations. There was the “Zero PP,” a technique that creates vintage and worn effects on denim without the use of potassium permanganate; the “deterpal bluecast” prevents post-bleaching yellowing and graying by improving the blueish cast of denim through detergent, washing-off and oxidizing properties, and finally, the marvel coating gives denim and other fabrics distinctive effects from the cracked, vintage and draping. 

Another highlight is the partnership with Isko Luxury by PG and Gnutti, which showcases Easyindigo — the indigo-dyeing chemical package free from hydrosulphite and caustic soda — applied to flocked fabrics for a distinctive and environmentally responsible aesthetic.

By using AI tools on the production and laser design, LMB plans to lower water and energy consumption on the production by 50 percent and achieve the EIM 100 percent green score by 2026.

Sustainability was key at Pulvera, a start-up powered by the parent company Casati that produces flock and fibers, now in its third generation. Since 1952, the Brianza, Italy-based company creates flock from internal textile waste through the pulverization technology guaranteeing a low-impact mechanical recycling process. Pulvera, through an end-to-end service for the companies, expands the areas of use of the powder obtained from the material waste into multiple fields such as textiles, packaging, design and automotive. The process, which requires less energy than other recycling technologies, enables the transformation of the prototype into an industrialized and scalable process, making sustainability accessible on a large scale. 

“To the company that has textile waste, we offer both Casati technology, which allows the upstream production process, and Pulvera technology, which enables the downstream one, to generate a tailor-made and high-quality product,” explained Eleonora Casati, CEO and cofounder of Pulvera, together with her sister Beatrice Casati, CEO of Casati. 

The first product of Pulvera is a pouffe made of waste from textile mattress covers which, for its form, was named Cremino after the Italian chocolate composed of three layers. Presented at the Ecomondo fair last month in Riccione, Italy, it is the result of a collaboration with Re Mat, an innovative start-up that uses discarded mattresses to obtain recycled polyurethane.

The base of the layered pouffe is composed of an agglomerate of mattress cover waste, transformed into powder thanks to pulverization, pressed into a square-shaped mold and hardened. Above the base there’s a square of Re Mat recycled polyurethane agglomerate of approximately 5 cm. The last layer is entirely made of recycled flock.