Blue Cast: Tony Tonnaer on Denim’s Safe Strategy and Choosing Quality Over Quantity
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 602.
Denim’s pre- and post-pandemic landscapes look fundamentally different. One key difference that consultant and industry veteran Tony Tonnaer has witnessed is a greatly reduced appetite for risk.
In conversation with Lenzing’s Tuncay Kilickan on the most recent episode of our Blue Cast podcast, Tony noted that brands and mills are playing it safe and are less apt to invest in innovation, particularly in areas like washing. With continued disruption, this hesitance has not been shaken, leading to a lot of sameness.
“If you want to be innovative and keep developing new styles, new fabric, new washes, new finishes, new cuts, it’s quite investment intensive, it’s quite expensive,” said Tony, who has worked at brands including Pepe Jeans and Kuyichi. “So, you see a lot of people after Covid sailing on the safe side.”
Two bright spots for innovation are students and streetwear brands. He encouraged the industry to bring back outside-the-box thinking, even if for just part of their collections.
In addition to innovation taking a backseat, the denim business has been affected by the general bifurcation of the retail market. The mid-market brands and offerings are disappearing, leaving solely budget options and luxury labels. Among the brands that suffered during the pandemic was Tony’s brainchild, Kings of Indigo, which declared bankruptcy in 2022. A few months later, the brand found a new owner and Tony exited the label, moving on to his new career path in consulting.
Another trend that has taken hold is the breaking down of the division between fashion and denim brands, with denim brands branching into other categories and fashion labels—from the high street to high luxury—creating denim collections.
“Denim really has emerged into all the little vessels of the industry,” said Tony. “Everybody is wearing denim. Everybody is doing it, and there’s so many different options, from classic to high-fashion, to streetwear, to sustainable. So there’s so many different flavors.”
Among the “flavors” that Gen Z is gravitating toward is secondhand denim, such as vintage Levi’s. Per Tony, part of what’s pushing them to explore resale is the decline of garment quality in recent decades.
“We need to produce less as an industry, and consumers need to be more aware that if they have a nice garment, that they cherish it like a friend or like something valuable and not just throw-away fashion,” he said. “Also, as an industry, we have to take care that we produce higher quality with the best cotton or the best raw materials, the best weaves, so it lasts for a very long time, it’s repairable, so we work more into a circular economy.”
It’s difficult to mold human behavior and convince consumers to pay more for higher quality and more sustainable goods. Tony sees that rising prices—tied to factors like shipping delays through the Strait of Hormuz and oil cost increases—could help encourage quality over quantity consumption patterns. Oil price hikes are already shaping car buying activity, boosting electric options. Other levers to nudge shoppers toward sustainable options could be clearer, more complete labeling like what is seen in food and sales tax rates that reflect an item’s impact.
“It’s very hard to let people change their behavior,” he said. “But maybe what’s happening now that prices really become more expensive and that goods become more scarce, [is] that we start learning to choose again for something we really want, or something we really need.”
Listen to the episode here.