Recentering denim through discipline and design
While the snow slowed Amsterdam’s city streets outside last Wednesday, G-Star was inside and just getting started. New creative directors, designers Rushemy Botter and Lisi Herrebrugh, presented RAW RESEARCH, giving denim a new future-facing. Presented inside G-Star’s Amsterdam headquarters (and subtly designed by Rem Koolhaas), the FW26 RAW RESEARCH framed denim as a material to be engineered as Botter and Herrebrugh stripped the spectacle back to its bones, positioning G-Star as a laboratory for what comes next.
Opening the show, rapper Frenna sets forth down the runway, immediately setting the tone for RAW RESEARCH. This is denim as experimental as it comes: curious, hands-on, and slightly unpolished on purpose. From untreated indigo to coated and bonded denims, everything is about process, material, and asking, “What else could denim be ?”
As the collection unfolded into the second half of the show, G-Star taps into its archive with the ARCHETYPES to inform its present. This era of legacy denim lays heavier weights, clean washes, reinforced seams and articulated cuts, reminding us that good denim looks as good as it lasts.
RAW RESEARCH replaces nostalgia with archival dedication as denim is treated with patience, intention, and legacy. G-Star’s new era under Rushemy Botter and Lisi Herrebrugh isn’t loud; rather, it’s thoughtful, engineered, and quietly confident.
Images courtesy of G-Star
