Denim Reimagined Part 1

To explore that idea, we turned to the Sew Me Collective, a young and fiercely creative platform built to champion emerging designers who specialise in handmade, one of a kind garments.

Sew Me has created a space where makers can grow their craft without the barriers of traditional retail. It is curated, intentional, and community driven. Every designer on the platform works slowly and thoughtfully, shaping pieces that could never be mass produced. Their work embodies everything we believe in: craft over speed, creativity over consumption, and the belief that existing materials can always be pushed one step further.   For this collaboration, the Sew Me artists were given access to a selection of Nudie Jeans garments that could not be saved through ordinary repair. Denim with a blown out knee, jackets with structural damage, mis dyed panels, pocket bags torn beyond patching, faulties from seasons past. Pieces that had reached the end of their life in our system. From there, the designers were free to do anything. They cut, unpicked, recast, re stitched and reshaped until new forms emerged. The result is a collection that stretches the imagination of what your average denim garments can be.

Maco is a one person design studio working with heavyweight fabrics, deadstock textiles, vintage materials and repurposed gear. He constructs garments entirely from scratch, blending traditional sewing with visible hand stitching, raw finishes and structural detailing. His pieces often feel engineered rather than simply sewn, with a focus on durability, silhouette and craft.

Maco created two striking pieces: a fur lined denim hood and a fully reconstructed denim jacket with a matching fur trimmed hood. Both garments are made from painstakingly patched denim arranged in a grid like structure, with Maco’s characteristic raw edges and heavy top stitching. Essentially, he created his own denim tartan. The jacket features contrasting square appliqués and a robust, almost armour like structure, showing his signature ability to turn damaged denim into something architectural and bold.

Noah is an emerging voice in sustainable design, creating one of a kind outerwear from existing clothing, discarded textiles and deadstock fabrics. His work is defined by sashiko stitching, beading and decorative handwork that restore and elevate reclaimed materials. His approach blends utility with artistry, always revealing the history of the fabric while reimagining it into something new.

Noah produced the largest selection of garments in the collaboration. His work includes multiple reconstructed denim jackets, two patchwork denim totes, a patchwork baseball cap and a multi panel wrap or apron made of reassembled denim fragments. Each piece is built from carefully selected panels of Nudie Jeans denim, arranged to highlight tonal variation and reinforced with his signature sashiko inspired stitching. The garments demonstrate his methodical way of cutting garments apart and returning them to life through structural patchwork.

Fin’s work draws on the joy of dressing up and the childlike wonder of playful silhouettes. Her pieces often feature sculptural flowers, rosettes and soft, blooming fabric shapes that transform the familiar into something whimsical. She designs for those who find beauty in the unserious and who connect with the emotional resonance clothing can evoke.

fff created two distinctive garments: a short sleeve denim top adorned with three dimensional floral structures around the neckline, and a pair of heavily shredded fringe denim trousers. Both pieces exemplify her ability to push denim into playful, expressive forms. The sculptural flowers embrace her signature style, while the fringe trousers reinterpret denim waste into movement and texture, turning what once were damaged garments into something spirited and bold.

ThredByFred is a local, low waste garment project built around intentional making. He works only with materials already available, mixing machine and hand stitching techniques with traditional cutting, dyeing and slow craft processes. His work highlights the character of reclaimed textiles rather than masking their origins.

ThredByFred produced a single cropped denim jacket created entirely from narrow quilt like strips of denim that have been frayed, stitched and applied in a diamond grid formation. The effect is highly textural and tactile, transforming the originally damaged denim into a richly layered surface. The jacket carries his unmistakable appreciation for material honesty, allowing the frayed edges, tonal differences and distressed pieces to become its defining features rather than flaws.

Roughcut is a one person design studio rooted in heritage, storytelling and the slow craft of making. Jack creates garments that feel like wearable artefacts, using custom printed textiles, layered detailing and traditional construction techniques. Every piece is cut, sewn and finished entirely in house, with no mass production and no outsourcing. His process is guided by narrative rather than trend, often building garments tied to specific places, artworks or histories. Patchwork, texture and intentional imperfection sit at the heart of his work.

Fully reconstructed hooded jacket that embodies Roughcut’s story-led approach. It is built from multiple panels of Nudie Re use denim, each piece showing a different wash, level of wear or texture. Rather than concealing these differences, Jack highlights them through careful placement and visible stitching. The jacket features a dense constellation of hand stitched white dots across the sleeves and upper panels, creating a tactile surface reminiscent of hand-mapped constellations or stitched cartography. The patchwork is irregular and expressive, guided by the character of the original denim rather than any symmetrical pattern. A cluster of tan leather patches appears on the front body, adding contrast and grounding the design in his signature artefact inspired language. The hood is lined in a warm orange tone, giving the piece an unexpected softness against the rugged patchwork exterior. Red drawstrings at the hem add another note of intentional contrast, reinforcing the idea that every element has been considered and placed with purpose. This garment feels like a reclaimed heirloom. It carries the past life of the denim, rebuilds it through narrative stitching and transforms what was once unsalvageable into a deeply expressive, one-of-a-kind jacket that could only come from Roughcut.