Keeping up on fashion’s next trend is essential for planning a lean and green wardrobe – one that maximizes each item’s wearability and longevity. At the two-day Denim by Premiere Vision trade fair held in Paris earlier this month, attending designers revealed denim’s newest direction. Moving away from distressed and destroyed detailing of endlessly scruffy past seasons, the latest styles glide towards an immaculate, tailored trouser look with studied seventies swagger – think Bianca Jagger smoldering the night away at Studio 54.

Other evolving trends emerged such as black denim, mirrored surfaces and imitating the explosion of pleated pant looks shown on recent runways – draped denim and drop crotch “jegging” styles utilizing flowy fabric mixes including the “carrot style” – named because of their shape, wide at the hips and tapered at the ankles.

Environmentally conscious consumers continue to demand the greening of their blue jeans impacting suppliers at the show, including Bossa, Kuroki, Kurabo and Denim Valley by Rojo, who exhibited fabrics made from recycled denim scraps. An eco-friendly “wine jean” range by South Korea’s Eco Yaa presented denim dipped in wine tannin, grape callus extract and sprout compounds. Apparently, the properties in wine are supposed to help prevent chafing (now you know).

Attending denim weavers and manufacturers attested to the ongoing dominance of the stretch skinny jean, revealing a backlog of fabric orders – meaning skinny jeans will remain in stores for at least the next three years. Agreeably, San Diego start-up Genomatica, announced their plans to release a green spandex by mid 2011. Genomatica have successfully converted renewable natural sugar to make BDO, an industrial plastic used to make stretch fibers like spandex historically manufactured with fossil fuels. So those organic denims will continue to cling for all for the right reasons.

Sustainability leader, Levi’s & Co report the final item in this triumvirate of denim news. Their ongoing efforts to lower Levi’s carbon footprint include an extensive Life Cycle Assessment report on a pair of 501’s, which revealed “almost 60 percent of the climate impact comes during the consumer phase. Nearly 80 percent of that is due to the energy intensive method we choose for drying.”

To encourage people to air dry rather than use the dryer, Levi’s has partnered with Myoo, a community that aim to solve environmental and social challenges by enticing participants to submit solutions to win prizes, to launch a competition to design a sustainable and effective clothing drying solution in areas where clothing lines are “banned for the sake of preserving values and prudishness.” Upload your projects before the deadline of July 31st, when the audience votes for the winner.

Image: Good Life Creative

The post Don’t Ditch Your Skinnies Yet! Latest Denim Trends and News appeared first on EcoSalon.