How Calik Denim Is Targeting the Luxury Category

Calik Denim wants to elevate how brands and consumers perceive denim.

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The Turkish mill unveiled Royal Denim, a fabric concept geared toward high-end and formal wear categories. The collection blends organic cotton with cashmere, silk, hemp and linen, resulting in fabrics with unique textures and character.

Royal Denim is Calik’s response to the growing number of designer brands investing in denim and the consumer demand for quiet luxury . Brands like Loro Piana, Khaite and Brunello Cucinelli have set new standards for designer jeans with unique fiber blends and elegant washes.

Additionally, Mehmet Serdar Ozcan, Calik’s sales director, said the fabrics in the Royal Denim collection have excellent color fastness and almost no shrinkage—qualities that help maintain the fit and appearance of these investment pieces .

“We want to offer denim fabrics for outside of the traditional use like jeans,” he said. “We’re looking at all the different areas.”

Calik presented the fabrics at Premiere Vision in Paris last month as a collection of fashion-forward garments. Ozcan said brands like Prada, Marc Jacobs, Guess and Karl Lagerfeld are already showing interest in the Royal Denim collection.

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Next, he said Calik plans to add double-sided fabrics to the collection as well as explore more untraditional categories for denim like leggings. He added that the mill has already developed some indigo products for Lululemon that fit and function like leggings but look like denim.

Calik is approaching quality several ways, including through its Farm to Store concept. The concept utilizes Turkish cotton grown by sister company Calik Cotton to make fabrics, allowing Calik to have total of its supply chain and provide clients with more quality control.

Calik Cotton began growing cotton in 2016 and was ginning it by 2018. PVH currently uses sources fabrics made with its regenerative cotton . Bestseller-owned Jack & Jones uses Calik’s organic cotton fabrics.

The mill plans to make the program available to more clients. As one of the largest cotton producers in Turkey, Ozcan said Calik Cotton produces more cotton than the mill consumes.

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