Miniature "mini" Denim

Early Levi's - mini denim - photograph (c) mohsin sajid

The fascination of producing miniature versions of things has always been embedded in us. It first of all shows us skill, craft, and knowledge to be able to produce things in mini form. Countless art movements, paintings, books have all been produced in miniature. It only seems natural, when you Master something, Miniaturisation is the way to go...  


I first came across my 1st a miniature levi's pant in a vintage denim shop in Tokyo back in 2004. i was blown away. I wanted one.. but was told "not for sale, only one..." but i was also told, back in the day, sales teams would make miniature versions of the collection to sale against, and this way would not break their backs lugging the collections around the country - Everything would be made in the correct fabric - so it would be a true representation of the garment - Not quite sure if its true, but its a nice story. 

Above 4 images (c) Levi's - Big E era mini Levi's

Theres been a trend on mini denim for a little while now, its seems like every cool brand is taking this, old concept, and spinning it with a little help from marketing. Plus its fun and hard / pain in the ass to do. Quite funny, our good friends at levi's did re-invent this very same concept and showed us all how it should be done, check out the image below from there bread and butter show for ss12.

Above LEVI'S(R) LVC SS12 collection - all Miniature - pretty cool is an understatement !.

Even in the Levis meat packing LVC shop in NYC,  you can see some mini denim representations next to there fits... - super cool : 

 

Above 2 images from LEVI'S(R) LVC Meat packing store on 414 W14th

Given the excitement of mini denim, about a year ago, i decided to make my own mini from my DKNY JEANS slim block i designed. I even got the global visual merchandising in on it, to pitch an idea for a Xmas store concept... The sad thing is, it was never picked up, but my mini denim was produced - Below are some prototypes of my selvage version, and images of the ones we got made with one of our factories...

Above my crude selvage attempt at mini denim - (c) MOHSIN SAJID / DKNY JEANS 

Above are the factory versions of the mini jeans we made for DKNY JEANS - of course not selvage like my mock up - but nice attempt never the less, using correct fabric and washing treatments from SS12...

Below are two great designers, Jason Denham and Julian Dash who have both dabbled in mini denim- I very much like how Jasons mini denim has pencils in it.

The Great Japanese brand Momotaro Jeans, also very recently made a mini denim version of their pant, esp nice is the hand scraping  / whisker marks and washing treatment.. super nice....

Above Image (c) Momotaro Jeans http://www.japanblue.co.jp/momotaro/

Long Live Mini Denim !