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Naked & Famous' Brandon Svarc (above), and his origami dog (top)

Denim nerd creases up in Hong Kong

Last Friday saw Naked & Famous Denim debut at Lane Crawford stores, as part of Fashion's Night Out, a retail celebration that attracted over 44,000 guests. During his visit to Hong Kong, founder and designer 29-year-old Brandon Svarc presented shoppers with self-made origami denim creations.

The Montreal native and self-confessed "denim nerd" was born into a family that has been in the garment industry for 63 years.

The brand's name satirises the celebrity obsessed culture that we live in, says Svarc. "It's silly to buy something because a famous person wears it; you should buy it because it is good value and well made."

The jeans are made in Canada with Japanese denim which, says Svarc, is created by using shuttle looms, no longer in commercial use in the West. "The Japanese are so good at obsessing with detail. They go back to that old-world quality when production was about quality, not mass production," he says. "Raw denim is my favourite fabric, the more you beat the jeans up the more beautiful they become."

More inventive designs include raspberry scratch-and-sniff jeans, glow-in-the-dark jeans, stainless steel blend jeans and his record-breaking heaviest jeans ever made. These weigh the equivalent of three pairs of jeans. Next year will see thermochromic denim, where the fabric changes colour depending on the temperature.

Svarc describes the brand as his "baby", but at the tender age of four, it is already distributed in 36 countries and growing up fast.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Denim nerd creases up in Hong Kong
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