7 for All Mankind celebrates 10 years in the denim industry
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Premium denim has long been synonymous with Los Angeles. From downtown being the epicenter of manufacturing, washing and innovation in denim, to jeans of all kinds being the unofficial uniform of the city’s denizens for decades.
So it’s no surprise that one of the biggest names in denim, Vernon-based 7 for All Mankind, is celebrating 10 years of making premium denim with a coffee table book, a special anniversary collection of jeans and a string of parties this week.
On Tuesday night, the brand hosted a party at a private residence in Beverly Hills that was more Mac store-meets-spacecraft than your typical mansion. The space was kitted out with concepts representing the ‘Seven Senses’ theme of the event and the coffee table book. Guests could wander through the circular space into rooms that held interactive installations based on ‘Seven Senses’: sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste and the added ‘style’ and ‘intuition.’
Style was captured in a display of the Anniversary collection (several reissues of the brand’s best-selling and most popular styles), and intuition was a touch screen that lighted up and projected onto a large, wall-mounted screen. However, the most interesting senses were ‘smell,’ which was represented in a room covered in photographs of L.A (which also appear in the book) that were scratch-and-sniff (most of them smelled like suntan lotion to me, but the concept and execution was impressive nonetheless,) and ‘taste,’ which was a wall of colorful tequila concoctions sitting in mounted Plexiglas containers. Guests could walk right up to and dispense the drink of their choice into a glass. Between the scratch-and-sniff photos and tequila wall, one couldn’t help but think of Willy Wonka, but with alcohol and art rather than candy.
The party, plus all the ancillary items being released around the company’s 10-year anniversary are part of a denim-centered celebration that hasn’t been seen in L.A for several years, since the burst of the ‘premium denim’ bubble.
‘In the contemporary market, 10 years is like dog years,’ said Susan Kellogg, president of the contemporary brand’s coalition for VF, 7 for All Mankind’s parent company. ‘So we’re really, really proud that we’re as vibrant today as when we started.’
The denim company continued its L.A celebration with a private dinner for celebrities and taste-makers Thursday evening, and will take its anniversary party on the road, holding in-store events in several of its 125 free-standing stores worldwide.
-- Melissa Magsaysay
Top and bottom photos: The 7 for All Mankind ‘Seven Senses’ party celebrating the brand’s 10-year anniversary. Credit: John Shearer / WireImage