10 Industry Insider Argue Why Bluezone is a Must-Visit Trade Show

This blog post is sponsored by Bluezone, the independent show for denim and sportswear by Munich Fabric Start. Register for the next show here!

I’ve been going to denim fabric trade shows regularly for the past since 2013. They’re like a glimpse into the future; you get to see denim collections and trends that won’t hit the streets and Instagram feeds for another 12-18 months.

In Europe, we have three main denim trade shows. Denim PV, Kingpins, and Bluezone. While they’re similar in the sense that the exhibitors are the mills and makers and visitors are (mainly) designers and developers, the three shows are widely different.

I visited Bluezone for the first time in 2016. The show’s denim curator, Panos Sofianos, invited me to promote my newly published book, Blue Blooded, as part of the launch tour I was doing.

I was immediately drawn in by the friendly yet professional atmosphere of the show, which—as far as I see it—is a direct reflection of the organisers and how they run things. Smooth, efficient, focused. Some would say German, but the show has a hint of laidback southern European casualness, which makes it quite un-German.

At the show in January 2018, my relations with the organiser had developed to the point where I was sort of an unofficial media partner, I guess. That was also when I really started focusing on videos.

I brought a videographer with me, invited more than a dozen experts to be interviewed on camera, and did most of the interviews in only one day, in dipping hot 35°C (95°F) heat on a balcony in the Keyhouse building.

Why Bluezone?

The last question I asked everyone I interviewed was ‘why Bluezone?’. I wanted to know why they were visiting the show, and why they’d recommend others to do so too.

With the August 2018 show less than two weeks out from the time this blog post goes live, Tricia Carey, Simon Giuliani, David Shah, Mohsin Sajid, Adriano Goldschmied, Giovanni Petrin, Panos himself, Maarten Wentholt, John-Randy Anthony, and Stefano Aldighieri argue why you should miss it!