Here we asked denim lover, blogger & expert Thomas Stege Bojer aka The Denimhunter to list and write about his very personal top ten denim stores around the globe.
Each day in the next two weeks we will present one of Bojer's favorites.
Today, it's part IV with Tenue de Nîmes in Amsterdam.
"By 2012, it was becoming a habit for me to choose our city getaway destinations based on the denim stores I could visit. We visited the Dutch capital that spring; Tenue de Nîmes was certainly a key attraction for me.
As a marketing guy who has built a career around telling stories, I've always had great respect for them. Startingin 2009 with their first Journal de Nîmes, the store's own print publication, they've been mastering the art of content marketing before it was a thing! In 2013, they even put out their own 10-page denirn dictionary that you get for free with every purchase. Simply brilliant.
As a kid, co-founder Menno van Meurs would dress up in his father's old denim jeans and cowboy boots that he'd kept since the '60s and '70s. That's when his denim passion was sparked. ''I still have all of those items in my archive today and my dad's Levi's jacket hangs in a frame in my office of our HQ.'
His first pair of raw denim jeans were from local brand Gap Star (which we now know as G-Star). While still in school, he would travel to The Hague to visit Mode D'Emploi, which was co-founded by denim legend Gerard Backx, the man behind Atelier LaDurance. 'When he started making his own jeans, the virus reaily hit me,' Menno recai!s. By 2007, at the age of 25, he decided to open his own denim-focused store. 'Our ambition was to create a denim haven like our parents used to know,' he wrote in the foreword of the first edition of the Journal de Nîmes.
Tenue de Nîmes has done collaborations with Levi's Vintage Clothing and the store was the first European retailer of Momotaro. But, unlike any other retailers on this list, Menno mixes heritage style classics with contemporary fashion brands like A.P.C. and Acne:'This mix is what we feel makes our assortment unique to the denim world'."
Name: Tenue de Nîmes
Locations: Two stores in Amsterdam/The Netherlands
Opened in: 2008 and 2012, respectively
Five defining brands: RRL, Levi's Vintage Clothing, Momotaro, Visvim, Tenue
Website: tenuedenimes.com
Instagram: @tenuedenimes
Please note: This story is also published in our current magazine #290, 'The Best of Denim' issue.
Find out more about Thomas Stege Bojer, Denimhunters and the selected stores on denimhunters.com.
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