Denim Talks

At Kingpins New York in July 2025, Lil Denim Jean (@lildenimjean) founders Nick Baur and Max Kaupp speak with JXRGE (@jxrgewmarr) about the creative process and how JXRGE's work as a tattoo artist influences his denim design. 

At Kingpins New York in July 2025, Lil Denim Jean (@lildenimjean) founders Nick Baur and Max Kaupp speak with designer Federico Berengo (@barengo) about his denim collection. 

Salli Deighton got her start at Wrangler and Lee and went on to build a career working in denim design and product development for some of the largest retailers and brands.  The latest project for the U.K. native is close to home — quite literally. In early 2025, she plans to open LaundRE, a denim laundry in the heart of London. The project is many years in the making but now is poised to official...

Ayesha Barenblat, founder & CEO of Remake, shares how the Instagram generation is galvanizing social change IRL.  Remake is founded on the idea of ‘radical disruption.’  The organization leverages everything from social media to public policy to make equitable business practices and mindful consumption a reality. In addition to partnerships with the Clean Clothes Campaign, the International La...

Kingpins Founder Andrew Olah recently caught up with textile engineer Paolo Leidi to talk about the state of denim manufacturing and what they see on the horizon. Paolo Leidi is the Denim, Corduroy and Apparel fabrics Engineer at ITE. Website : www.itetex.com Instagram : @ite_indigo_taste_experience

Sanjeev Bahl is tired of talking about sustainability. As the founder and CEO of Saitex, a fully vertical textile company that spins and weaves denim from yarns they have dyed with sewing factories in Ho Chi Minh City and Los Angeles, he has received numerous recognitions for the company’s socially and environmentally conscious stance. But he said, the goal from the outset was just to do the right...

If anyone can shed light on what’s happening in denim today, it would be Jerome Dahan. For the founder of both Citizens of Humanity and 7 for All Mankind the focus on price points is undermining the industry, allowing denim to drift too far away from the creativity that propelled brands like his to success. Andrew Olah, founder of the Kingpins trade show and the Olah Inc. agency, has known Dahan f...

In 2019, my friend Scott Morrison made a pilot for what he hoped would be a series of shows about jeans. YouTube indicates that 460,000 people have seen it to date, but I’ve never heard one person mention it. Plus, the few people I asked about the show all said they had never heard of it — let alone seen it.   Scott is a legend in our industry having started not one, not two but three successful b...

Kingpins Founder Andrew Olah recently talked with Shannon Mercer, CEO of FibreTrace, to discuss traceability tools to help brands gain insight into where their materials are coming from, as well as the role of consumer influence and compliance with international legislation aimed at ensuring responsible sourcing. 

As consumers, we have the tiniest window into how the products we use are made. Maybe you get a single country of origin or the fiber content, but that hides the many other chemicals, countries, and suppliers that contributed to its production. Andrew Olah has been in the upstream world of denim and clothing production for nearly 50 years and has run the Kingpins Show , one of the biggest markets...

This week, Denim Talks is proud to introduce to a special project we’ve been working on with Lee.  In the first episode, Lee’s Roian Atwood and Kingpins founder, Andrew Olah, explore each step of the denim supply chain, discussing the sustainability challenges and potential opportunities to make denim better for the world, better for the environment and better for you. New Indigood episodes will b...

Visitors to Kingpins’ Denim Days in New York will remember Studio 189’s bold prints and indigo-dyed textiles. The New York-based company, founded by fashion executive Abrima Erwiah and actress Rosario Dawson, was a regular exhibitor at the consumer-facing denim festival.  We sat down with Erwiah at the festival last year to hear the story behind Studio 189 and to discuss the company’s sustainable...

Sanjeev Bahl, owner of Saitex, has created a denim factory considered the cleanest in the world. Fair Trade-certified, as well as a Benefit Corporation, Saitex is constantly evolving as Bahl works to make the business cleaner, safer and more equitable. Bahl talks to us about the industry's need for a reset and what to consider to move forward. 

Paul Guez talks about the early days of designer denim, how he introduced French-style jeans to the U.S. market and that time he got Elton John to rewrite a song for him. 

For the launch episode of Kingpins podcast series Denim Talks, we sit down with Andrew Olah, the founder of Kingpins, to talk about the history of the denim supply chain trade show, as well as the denim and jeans business' efforts to be more sustainable (and the challenges of defining that term). Plus, Andrew tells us how he got hooked on denim. 

Denim Talks is the podcast by the Kingpins Show, the first-ever denim-only supply chain trade show. We're industry veterans, we're denim lovers, we like stories. Here's a tiny bit of an interview we did with Andrew Olah, founder of Kingpins Show. The full episode and more with really great denim people (Abrima Erwiah of Studio 189, Paul Guez of Sasson Jeans ('member?!), Constan...