Denim heads and designers have a new book to add to their coffee tables.
Fashion sketchbook producer Fashionary recently released “The Denim Manual, a Complete Visual Guide for the Denim Industry,” offering a comprehensive look inside the business of denim. The book, which features a cover made of raw denim, includes more than 700 illustrations and photos, as well as a complete collection of denim fabrics, washes and terms that give readers’ an insider’s take on the world of denim.
Beginning with the origin of denim in the 1600s and traveling through to today, the book provides an illustrated timeline of key events in denim’s history before it moves onto the different types of denim fabric. From there, it provides a Denim Design and Details Library of 200 design elements that serves as an encyclopedia of each part of a denim garment.
The book’s Wash Library outlines each step for creating different effects such as acid wash and whiskering. It also includes a dyeing guide that covers techniques for achieving various shades and patterns. The final section focuses on denim maintenance and provides tips for preventing shrinking and fading and ultimately extending denim’s lifecycle for as long as possible.
The book is available now for $39.90 on the Fashionary website.
Though its forte is sketchbooks and fashion templates, Fashionary has published a number of books in the past on subjects like the business of fashion, a collection of biographies on fashion visionaries and “Textilepedia” and “Fashionpedia” books that serve as visual dictionaries for the industry. In 2015, it released a “Shoe Design” book and sketchbook covering shoe measurements, manufacturing, patterns, shoe labels and trade fairs, and a shoe style library of over 300 styles of shoes from historical times to modern day classics.
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The subject of denim was a strategic one for the book publisher. The fabric has been the choice fashion category for books and documentaries in recent years, including “Unraveled: The Life and Death of a Garment” by Maxine Bédat. The book follows the journey of a pair of jeans from a cotton farm in Texas, to dyeing and weaving factories in China, then to sewing facilities in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, and back to a warehouse in the U.S.
Earlier this year, the PBS show “American Experience” kicked off its most recent season with an in-depth look at denim’s origins. “Riveted: The History of Jeans” outlined denim’s journey to becoming the quintessential American garment, tracking its roots in slavery, growth through youth culture and the civil rights movement and more. In 2019, denim brand 3×1 founder Scott Morrison debuted a documentary series “Common Thread” following influential denim companies including Candiani Denim, Diesel and Tonello as they explore the historical, current and future landscape of denim. “RiverBlue” debuted a year prior in 2018 and followed international river conservationist Mark Angelo as he explained fashion’s destruction of rivers and the initiatives in place to help reverse the damage.