“And the winner of the 2015 Global Denim Awards is… Sanatoria Diletto and
Candiani Denim!” announced Marietta Hoitink, founder of HTNK to the hall
filled with over 750 denim professionals Thursday night at Amsterdam’s
Westergasfabriek. The team was named the victor from a group of who were paired with
eight progressive denim mills in order to showcase the best of denim
craftsmanship, innovation, design and sustainability.
The winner of the 2nd edition of the denim’s industry version of the
Grammy’s came as a surprise to many, but was the biggest shock for Andrea
Diletto, the designer behind bespoke tailoring label Sartoria Diletto as it
was his first time working with denim and creating a denim collection. “It
is such a wonderful surprise,” he said to FashionUnited after the show.
Although the jury had been leaning towards selecting an international
winner for this year’s edition, the young designer’s win felt close to
winning the lottery.
Together with 77 year old Italian denim mill Candiani Denim, the two set
out to combine both the best of tailoring and denim for their collection
for the Global Denim Awards. With both designer and denim mill having roots
in Milan, it became clear that the resulting collection would breath
premium craftsmanship, heritage and as well as innovation. “I wanted to
discover a new world, a blue world. A combination of heritage from Italy,
and a new perspective on denim in tailoring,” said Diletto on his
collection.
The team aimed to create a collection which brought together the best of
denim and tailoring, in a way which had never been seen or done within the
industry before. “There has been work produced before which saw tailoring
and denim come together in the past, but the industry did not pay much
attention to. It’s never been done before, not like this. Not on this level
,” said Simon Giuliani, marketing manager at Candiani Denim.
Candiani Denim encouraged Diletto to experiment with denim fabrics,
treatments and washing in its own personal laboratory in order to get hands
on experience working with the material. “My hands turned blue working with
all that denim,” joked Diletto. However allowing the young designer the
freedom to work in their denim labs paid off, and Giuliani notes afterwards
they really had to narrow down the selection of fabrics to use. “If we had
not been working with him, then we would have never developed these new
fabrics, such as the striped women’s waistcoat which is made from 100
percent recycled fibres” added Giuliani.
“But it was Diletto who really made this fabric work for the collection. It
was plain blue without the stripes and it look terrible. He was the one who
suggested we add them in and made it work.” Diletto and Candiani used old
shuttle looms to weave new fabrics from recycled yarn, tailoring hemming
techniques on the denim, as well as brushing treatments that went hand in
hand with match lashings to create a finish unseen before on one of the
collection’s jackets. The entire collection was hand made in Milan, where
Andrea to from the young age of 18 to establish this bespoke tailoring
concept.
“We wanted to create something with the most premium denim, at the highest
level of craftsmanship so everything was done by hand. It took us 100 hours
to make a two piece suit for the men,” explained Giuliani. The resulting
collection comprised of 3 sharply tailored women’s denim suits and two
men’s suits, as Diletto wanted to emphasis tailoring on the female form and
create a more relaxed, casual fit for the male form.
“I have seen the collection many times before, on models during fitting
sessions and on the hangers. But when I saw the collection tonight on the
catwalk, I had goosebumps on my arms and tears in my eyes, it was simply
beautiful,” admitted Giuliani. Andrea Diletto is the second designer to win
the global denim awards, following the event’s debut winner . In addition to
winning 10,000 euros, the winning collection will be exhibited during at
international denim trade fair Kingpins in Amsterdam, New York and Hong
Kong.
Italian denim mill Berto Industria Tessile, who was partnered with
StudioPretzel and its founder Emiliano Laszlo, was awarded Best Fabric
prize.
Photo Credit: Simon Trel