In a presentation at the Kingpins24 online event, Kingpins founder Andrew Olah stated that denim fabric design is shifting as a result of COVID-19.

All of the designers at the presentation agreed that with many fabric presentations moving to digital means, they must get creative with how they describe their new collections. And many agreed that this requires significantly reducing their collections.

Kingpins typically sees an array of 4,800 fabrics, with 60 denim mills each presenting around 80 pieces in their collections. Baldi noted that those numbers are highly unnecessary.

And because customers can no longer rely on touching fabrics and scanning the room for materials and innovations that interest them, mills must use other methods of communicating their unique properties. According to Yenici, this is where marketing comes in.

It forces mills to focus on a minimal collection that has a massive impact—and the quality over quantity approach is one that the fashion industry as a whole has been contemplating since the beginning of the pandemic. In Vogue’s Global Conversations series, many designers discussed the concept of slowing down and producing more mindfully for the sake of the environment, the consumer and the designer. By placing more of an emphasis on sustainability and purpose, fashion can become a force for good, they argued.

And that may be why all three panelists pointed to vintage denim as the sector’s most exciting trend. Despite all of the latest innovations in design, it’s often history that inspires the future.