Metallics, AI and Muted Colors Top Cotton Incorporated’s Denim Forecast for 2025-2026

Cotton Incorporated provides a wide range of information, technical assistance and innovation to support companies with aspects of their cotton business, including trends in denim.

In a recent webinar, Cotton Incorporated trend forecaster Lauren Williams and Christie Rhodes, Cotton Incorporated’s manager of women’s product, shared how lifestyle trends from food and to technology and architecture, are influencing the 2025-2026 denim palettes, fabrics and styling directions.

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Here’s a look at what’s to come in denim.

Echoing the Spring/Summer 2025 decorated denim looks seen during men’s fashion week this summer, Williams said more ornate and detailed denim is on the way. Feminine accents like ruffle trim on a cotton jean and jewel hardware on a lightweight twill set as well as constructions like pleats speak to a “more decorative aesthetic” and gives denim “avant garde elegance.”

Rhodes added that fabrics like a 100 percent cotton indigo chambray that is mechanically pleated add movement to garments. Another decorative option is to laser a pattern on the back of a left hand twill denim to create a frayed surface.

Cotton Incorporated as been tracking metallic denim achieved through finishing and construction for several seasons. The look is evolving into a more futuristic aesthetic for 2025-2026, however, Williams said.

Denim with an indigo yarn warp and black yarn and gold Lurex yarn in weft results in a subtle shimmer. Metallic blue foil printed on the surface of a black base delivers a cool look. Gold foil gives a cotton denim garment an antique finish. Rhodes highlighted a textured honeycomb fabric with a natural warp and weft, accented with pink foil just on the higher surface areas.

Coatings are coming back, especially ones that give jeans a laminated effect. Clear polyurethane coatings create a high shine appearance and finish, Williams said. Others offers a new take on vintage. Williams described a product development fabric that has a white coating and then was hand sanded at garment form which reveal a very bright blue indigo hue underneath.

The influence of artificial intelligence is evident in glitched and glowing effects. “We found a wide range of denim garments with prints and finishes that we feel are inspired by this technology,” Williams said, adding that examples span pixilated digital prints to washed and overdyed garments.

Ozone technology can be used to give fabric surfaces a “blotchy, splotchy” effect, Rhodes said.

Traditional check patterns are coming into play in unexpected ways. Williams highlighted an inlay plaid fabric with a denim inspired colorway and a black jean lasered with a windowpane check pattern and then overdyed brown. Laser etching can also be used to create a checkered texture or ombre checkered pattern.

Denim is being mixed with traditional suiting fabric as well. “We’re seeing this in a wide range of silhouettes that range from very sophisticated to a slightly more edgy in their appearance,” Williams said.

Rhodes described how a blue yarn dye in the warp gives a mixed dobby herringbone fabric an indigo effect with a suiting look and feel. A yarn dyed fancy twill with an exaggerated twill on the surface can be brushed to mimic the look and feel of corduroy.

After the post-pandemic color explosion that saw red and Barbie pink everywhere, designers are shifting to a quieter palette. Williams called out unique constructions and washes that give denim a muted, powdery chalky look.

This idea is can be executed in fabrics through special washes and yarn choices. Extreme washes give jeans that have sulfur black yarn in the warp and an indigo weft a sun-bleached effect. A cotton dobby stripe jean with natural yarn in the warp and weft can be pigment dyed and then overdyed, she said.

Fabrics with recycled denim content natural give fabrics a muted color, allowing brands to bypass extra garment processing steps, Rhodes added.

Williams added that color are being pulled from nature like rusty red, orange and brown.

In addition to denim silhouettes that look as though they were made of even leather or suede, Williams said more designers are “blurring the lines of traditional denim looks with prints and finishing effects that really show there’s more than meets the eye.”

A Cotton Incorporated product development fabric conceals the twill line of a 100 percent cotton jean through needle punching on the back of the fabric, making it difficult to tell if the fabric is a knit or woven. Trompe-l’?il prints of denim on non-denim also add a surreal aesthetic to men’s and women’s looks, she said.

“Digitally printed denim allows for realistic and very unrealistic effects for alternatives to traditional indigo denim,” Rhodes said.