Denim on the Catwalk

Global Denim Awards

As of Thursday, November 3, 2016

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HTNK and House of Denim’s Mariett Hoitink

Dutch designer Anbasja Blanken, working with Italian denim mill ITV Denim, was named Best Collection and Indian denim mill Arvind, featured in a collection by Roosmarijn Koster, was named Best Fabric at the third annual Global Denim Awards, held at Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam on Oct. 26.

Inspired by luminescent coral, Blanken’s collection featured glow-in-the-dark denim created for her by ITV, which created yarns with luminescent properties.

“My concept was about the deep sea and, more specifically, coral, the ‘flowers of the sea,’” she said. “Some coral’s colors alternate when the light changes. It can even be luminescent. What if my denim pieces produced light themselves?”

The event—hosted by HTNK Fashion recruitment and consultancy, the Kingpins denim trade show, and House of Denim and sponsored by e3 Cotton—is held concurrently with the Kingpins denim trade show in Amsterdam. The winning collections are displayed at Kingpins events in New York and Hong Kong as well as at the 2017 edition of Amsterdam Denim Days, acity-wide denim festival featuring workshops, seminars, sales and parties. Denim Days was founded by Lucel van den Hoeven, the chief executive officer of fashion trade-show organizer Modefabriek—with HTNK owner Mariett Hoitink and James Veenhoff, who together founded Amsterdam’s House of Denim, an organization that promotes sustainable denim production and operates the, a three-year educational program in jeanswear, located in Amsterdam.