Blue Cast: Lil Denim Jean’s Founders on Life-Friendly Jeans and Future Moves
Blue Cast is a podcast series from the TENCEL™ Denim team. Each episode features a conversation with a special guest from within the industry or the fringes of the denim community. The following is a recap of Episode 509.
If Lil Denim Jean has its way, denim will become dirtier, detailed and more durable.
In the latest episode of our Blue Cast podcast, the brains behind the brand chatted with Lenzing’s global head of business development – denim Tuncay Kilickan about the origins of their label and their learnings along the way.
Lil Denim Jean began in 2019 as a digital mood board or museum on Instagram curated by longtime friends Nick Baur and Max Kaupp to compile references for an eventual fashion brand down the line. The platform features both emerging and established brands, and occasionally, they also showcase their own work. Lacking access to factories at the time, their earliest creations were upcycled secondhand jeans.
“We collected all of other people’s creations that we liked and that we wanted to showcase,” said Nick. “We were kind of the spot where people could get a hold of all the cool jeans.”
From its digital beginnings, Lil Denim Jean has blossomed into a brand, as they “wanted to build [their] own product completely from scratch,” per Max. Their shared skateboarding and BMX backgrounds influence their designs and creations. For a Kingpins Show experience last October, the pair brought bikes to dirty and distress jeans on site.
“We do a product which is really much inspired by our kind of lifestyle,” said Max. “It’s a product to really live in, a product you don’t need to worry getting dirty when you’re out with your friends or whatever.”
Over time, Nick and Max have been expanding their understanding of denim production, and Max recently took an internship at a laundry to further this education. A connection brought them to Italy to visit a commercial laundry around four years ago. From there, they started “knocking on doors” to find other partners in the country that could meet their needs for smaller batch production. These manufacturers are also their collaborators, working alongside them to develop what the duo envisions, and Lil Denim Jeans oversees the process.
Lil Denim Jeans’ creations are meant to be an investment, and Nick noted that denim as a category could head in a more expensive direction. He foresees it becoming a more “elevated garment” that is durable and made of natural materials.
The now 22- and 25-year-old co-founders have always juggled school with this endeavor. After getting an undergrad architecture degree, Nick is in a master’s program for fashion, and Max is an undergrad student in fashion design. “To become a professional, it doesn’t take 100,000 hours,” said Nick. “It just takes this dedication and the want to do something.”
Looking ahead, the Lil Denim Jean team plans to expand beyond the denim category with a more structured fashion brand launching next spring. “Lil Denim jean was our first project,” said Nick. “It was made for love and for fun and to give a reward to everyone that supports us, but now we really want to be something serious.”
Listen to the full episode here.