Loving Handz: The New Selvedge Brand With an Inclusive Vision 

Contributing Indigo Invitational sponsors can opt for coverage here on Denimhunters. To enquire about sponsorship and advertising opportunities, contact us here.

Meet the Gender-Fluid Selvedge Brand Trying To Bring Heritage Denim into the 21st Century

To say that we’ve never covered an origin story quite like this one would be a massive understatement. Handz, founded by Franco-German fashion designer and consultant Tilmann Wröbel and second-generation Greek denim tailor Themis Goudroubis, is the product of more than 60 years of industry experience between the two.

Fronting the brand is Tilmann Wröbel, who was immersed in street-level European subcultures before many of us were even born. In his youth, Tilmann was part of a renegade group of skateboarders who pioneered the sport in the ‘70s, first in Germany and then in France. 

A lover of board sports of every variety, Tilmann would go on to found France’s first indoor skatepark in 1990 and has served on the board of the French Skateboarding Federation since 1988, refereeing competitions and encouraging the growth of board sports in France.  

Clothing was a big part of the burgeoning street culture, and Tilmann displayed an early aptitude, not just with the boards, but also with the style.

He saw in fashion a chance to express an inner feeling, and he followed this interest into the fashion industry, training in fashion design at the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne in Paris. 

Before his studies were even finished, he had won prestigious awards and was working with haute couture brands and designers including Christian Dior, André Courrèges, and Nina Ricci, learning the finer points of haute couture design.  

He describes the world of haute couture as an ivory tower, where, especially in the late ‘80s, pedigree and connections carried tremendous, stifling weight. Tilmann, who would arrive at the studios riding a skateboard, was clearly from another world.

There were some in the industry who recognised that Tilmann’s outsider status made him an invaluable asset—especially when those brands wanted to address the street-level style world that Tilmann moved through so naturally. 

This helped Tilmann establish himself as one of Europe’s premier fashion designers and creative directors for brands that catered to subcultures. He designed apparel ranges for legendary skateboarding brands like Etnies (then in its infancy) and Quiksilver, and during his time with the latter, he developed selvedge lines for Quiksilver, Roxy, Gotcha, and DC Shoes.

The denim industry has essentially been his home ever since. As a consultant and designer, he has worked with or for a long list of European, Japanese, and American brands including Japan Blue Ltd., Lee Cooper, Asphalte, Zadig & Voltaire, just to name a few. Over the next nearly four decades, he left an indelible mark on the industry. 

Joining Handz: Combining Couture and Craftsmanship

In 2016, Tilmann met Themis Goudroubis, one of Greece’s premier denim craftsmen. The two of them started discussing a new project that would combine their strengths. 

Both had a strong grounding in traditional tailoring, but both were also denimheads through and through. They wanted to build a bridge connecting the very separate worlds of heritage denim and high fashion.

On either side of the divide, the two worlds of denim seemed to be missing something. On the couture side, there was not enough appreciation for the kind of artisanship Japanese denim mills and sewing factories have brought to the industry. 

With few exceptions, couture denims are flat and lifeless, with very little of the texture and character we’ve come to appreciate in Japanese selvedge. Rather than trying to produce the best-possible version of a widely recognised form, couture labels have to be perpetually on the cutting edge. Artisan denim is outside of their scope. 

On the other side, the world of heritage denim has long been deeply conservative. They have elevated workwear to an art form, but they address a narrow audience. Tilmann and Themis want to build a new brand that addresses these deficits and combines the strengths of both worlds.

The result is Handz Jeans, which they founded in 2022. Anything but average, they’re doing things very differently. With an equal measure of style and substance, they’ve built a sturdy bridge connecting the very different worlds of high fashion and workwear.

Footloose and Gender-Free

Right from their first collection, what immediately set Handz apart from other brands was their clear attempt to reach an underserved subset of selvedge consumers: women.

Female faders or denim enthusiasts frequently bemoan the lack of great pairs designed for women’s bodies—and for very good reason.

Only a small handful of selvedge brands offer anything for women, and an even smaller number of these have designed fits from the ground-up specifically for female selvedge enthusiasts. This represents a significant barrier to entry for half the population. 

So many potential newcomers to the world of selvedge encounter this barrier.

Either male, female, or something in between, they don’t fit into the mould of straight, slim, or tapered cuts, so they feel excluded in a scene that, otherwise, prides itself on being broadly inclusive.

Tilmann and Themis have attempted to remedy this with an even-handed emphasis on men, women, and those who stake their tents somewhere between these two camps.

You can see this play out on their website, where products are modelled sometimes by men, sometimes by women. It’s refreshing.

Tilmann emphasises that Handz jeans are not “unisex”. In the denim world, that usually means generously cut straight fits that can be worn by either gender. What they’ve tried to do with Handz is to create, not a unisex brand, but a gender-fluid one.

Each different size has been carefully designed with a particular shape (or range of shapes) in mind. As the size grows, the pattern changes as well, changing gradually from female shapes in smaller sizes (with more room for hips and thighs) to straighter masculine shapes in larger sizes. 

The resulting pairs can be broken into a few categories:  

• Sizes 26-28: Designed for women
• Sizes 29-30: Designed for a combination of men and women
• Size 31: Gender fluid
• Sizes 32-34: Becoming more masculine, but will still work on many women
• Sizes 35-36: Designed for men

These categories apply to all three of their gender-fluid fits: Stapled, a straight fit based on popular cuts from the late 1940s; Middled, a modern tapered cut with a low to medium rise; and Slacked, a tapered modern interpretation of a vintage fishtail workwear slack.  

Handz’s gender fluidity is only possible thanks to Tilmann and Themis’s decades of experience tinkering with patterns. They’re not simply creating a usable pattern and then extrapolating it. They’re treating each new size as a distinct pattern for a distinct body type. 

You can see some of this pattern-making magic at work in the two pairs that are being worn in this year’s Indigo Invitational. Damon and Inda are both wearing the same Stapled fit, but in very different sizes. Damon is a W38, Inda is a W29.

If you’ve ever felt as though the selvedge scene and its narrow range of classic and contemporary fits doesn’t speak directly to you, Handz may be the brand you’ve been waiting for. 

Details Make the Difference

Tilmann and Themis were true-blue denimheads long before they started Handz, and they understand that the path to the selvedge enthusiast’s heart is paved with details. In the world of couture denim, these details are less important than the label. 

For a new label in the world of heritage denim, this is reversed. The badge only becomes meaningful when it brings with it an assurance that the attention to detail will be there, and Handz is showing that they fully understand this.

This starts with the denim fabrications they use. All of them have been milled from rope-dyed indigo yarns in Japan on wooden shuttle looms. Tilmann’s work frequently brought him to Japan, and he sources each denim from some of the small-batch denim artisans that he encountered during his travels there. 

All of their denims are 100% cotton. This is atypical for denim brands that try to entice women into the world of selvedge.

Says Tilmann, “We had to choose between the beauty of 100% cotton denim and the compromises of stretch denim. Based on what we’ve heard from female customers, we definitely made the right choice.” 

Tilmann understands that 100% cotton jeans will not accommodate the complete spectrum of human shapes and sizes. He’s not trying to be all things to all people, though. He’s trying to create a more gender-inclusive space inside the world of selvedge denim, and Handz’s female customers are happy to find in Handz the fits that they’ve been looking for.  

While each pair is crammed with fine finishing touches like bias belt loops and hems chain stitched with a Union Special machine, there is one key difference that gives Handz pairs a unique and sleek look when compared to other heritage brands.

Instead of using contrasting straw- or tobacco-coloured thread, they have opted for dark blue thread throughout their line. When the jeans are brand new, the stitching is practically invisible. As they age, this conscious design choice becomes a more conspicuous one..

Each pair is crafted in house by Themis and his small team of denim tailors. Tilmann takes care of the design and selects the denims; Themis handles the production. It’s a true maker brand, with both of the principals deeply involved in every stage of production. 

A few other details we’ve been extremely impressed with: 

• 100% Copper Hardware
• Chain Stitched Hems and Waistbands
• Lined Back Pockets
• Heavy Duty Cotton Twill Pocket Bags
• Peekaboo Selvedge Fifth Pocket
• Bias C/B Belt Loops

They’re doing so many of the little things right. When details like these are stacked on top of fits like Tilmann and Themis can produce, the result is bound to impress. It’s exceptionally rare to see a new brand doing pairs with this combination of flair and precision.

Shared Passions and Values: Handz and the Indigo Invitational

For the past few years, the Indigo Invitational has relied on the support of selvedge brands, who help keep the competition entirely free of charge for all competitors. Most brands who choose to support are well established in the scene. Handz is a little different.

They’re a brand-new name with a very small marketing budget, but they see support of the competition as an ideal way to introduce themselves to the fading scene and its passionate denimheads. They also see the competition as the ultimate testing ground and stress test for their pairs.

When one of their pairs in the competition was only a few weeks old, the top button sheared into two pieces. Upon investigating, it turned out that their hardware supplier had been using an inferior-grade copper. They’re grateful that one of our competitors helped them identify an issue, and they’ve since rectified it.

The interior of each pair is sprayed with a specially developed Polygene spray, which has been shown in the lab to reduce odours and bacteria. This has helped the Handz competitors extend the period between washes considerably. 

Damon (aka @the.grateful.guy), a selvedge denim newcomer, credits Handz with turning him into a full-fledged denim addict.

His 14 oz. unsanforized pair of Stapled took time to open up for him, but they started accelerating after around six months of wear. He loves how they have retained their shape, even after months on end of near-daily wear.

Inda (aka @inda.kalivoda) has had a similar experience with the same pair. She managed to coax bright indigo tones and slubby texture to the surface in just a few months, and she loves the indigo topstitching, which makes the pair easy to wear at the office. She’s considering the Handz Wildered (a wide-legged ladies fit) for the next Invitational.

Some of the Handz jeans worn in this year’s Indigo Invitational may one day end up in the brand’s unique upcycling initiative. After three years with your pair, you can send them back to Handz for a 50% discount on your next Handz pair.

The loved pairs are then turned into beautiful hand-stitched sashiko artworks, so the more damage the wearer has done over the years, the better. It’s a truly circular initiative, combining artistry, sustainability, and style.  

We find it intensely difficult to part with the pairs that we’ve fully faded—even after they’ve become almost entirely unwearable—but this initiative ensures that our fading efforts lead somewhere. In their expert hands, Handz pairs can become the backbone for works of denim art. 

The initiative is an extension of Tilmann and Themis’s shared passion for well-worn workwear, and it’s that passion that brought them to us. They’ve been an exemplary competition partner, and they’ve shown over and over again that they share our values and our passions. 

Like them, we like to see well-made products pushed to or beyond their breaking points. To take them to this point, we need to love them enough to wear them every day. They need to be worthy of this love, and Handz pairs, made with pairs of loving hands, are definitely worthy. 

The post Loving Handz: The New Selvedge Brand With an Inclusive Vision  appeared first on Denimhunters.

DENIM and PATCHES sourced this post originally published on this site