DISRUPTING DENIM AND RECREATING THE RAW

G-Star’s new creative directors Lisi Herrebrugh and Rushemy Botter disclosed the first steps of their redesign of G-Star’s future.

G-Star, the Dutch jeans brand founded in 1989, is now facing its next phase guided by newly appointed Lisi Herrebrugh and Rushemy Botter. The new creative directors for Raw Research collection, one of the brand’s premium offerings, are leading the way for G-Star’s next direction involving a wider consumer base, also heading upwards, while remaining democratic, and pushing boundaries and transforming their bold ideas into design. Their first G-Star Raw Research collection will debut during Paris Fashion Week in January 2026. Here, they disclose some aspects that will define the future of the brand led by them.

How are you?

Lisi Herrebrugh (LH) and Rushemy Botter (RB): We are doing very well. We are in Amsterdam’s G-Star headquarters working on the next collections with so many good projects happening. So, we’re excited.

Can you tell me briefly about your career?

LH: We basically started studying fashion. Rushemy was on the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and I studied at AMFI (Amsterdam Fashion Institute). We started working together at a very early stage of our career and at a certain point we noticed we shared the same aesthetics and the same goals in fashion. And then after Rushemy’s graduation in 2017 we launched Botter, our brand, and did a lot of for a couple of seasons and we showed it in Paris.

What is Botter like?

RB: It is very much like an emotional brand focused on our Caribbean Couture concept, upbringing together everything that we learned in fashion schools in Belgium and in Amsterdam. So it’s really like a very emotional project for us. And soon after we got appointed in Paris for Nina Ricci and we worked there from 2018 to 2022. We started at G-Star almost a year ago.

You had a great background and great mentors. Walter Van Beirendonck was Rushemi’s teacher. Lisi, a cum laude graduate of AMFI, started her career at Viktor & Rolf. You won both the Hyères Grand Prix in 2018 and the ANDAM Fashion Award in 2022, and you were creative directors of Nina Ricci. How have such mentors influenced your career, aesthetics and design?

RB: Entering the academy in Antwerp was already very intriguing. You felt almost the spirits of the people that studied there before you. It’s a very, very special environment that taught us to be fearless. Also Walter van Beirendonck pushed us and pushed me a lot. He was always telling us “Dream big, and you can become anything that you want.” But he was always emphasizing finding our own voice. And absolutely, what we learned is that it’s absolutely not about trends or pleasing others. It’s more about honesty, concept, construction and really doing our research very well. We were also getting this lesson–it was called art philosophy, art history and fashion history. This was very important as well because you need to study history to create something new. Everything has already been created, but you need to know the history to put something from yourself inside to create something new and a new vision. This will always stay with me.

Lisi, do you want to add anything from your side?

LH: Honestly, I was there in the years at the academy, but I didn’t study there, you know? I was a little bit more in the background. Walter van Beirendonck called me his “adopted student.” I came in and out and they saw me and they knew we worked together. What I learned at the academy in Amsterdam was much more technical. It’s much more about being like an independent designer and really creating from zero. How I learned was more that you start with an idea and how do I construct a very good pattern or a 3D garment that can be appreciated from the front, from the back, and from the sides and is well fitted? So my love for fashion grew much more in the technical and sculptural aspect of it. Like building a silhouette.

Is this still happening? Does each of you bring their own personlity, expertise and competence?

LH/RB: Yes. Exactly.

And what about G-Star? What did you like about it when you accepted this work?

LH/RB: It’s like this sort of nostalgia feel that we had. We are big fans of G-Star and we grew up in a small village near Amsterdam. It’s like 30 minutes away from the headquarters of G-Star—and the brand is the pride of The Netherlands. When we were younger, we were saving money to buy the first Elwood, the brand’s iconic denim. But it was a bit too expensive for us young kids at the time. So we were recreating it ourselves, you know? We were cutting, pasting, and doing these kind of things and making it interesting. We also cut out the G-Star logo out of another denim and put it on our new jeans. It was more that kind of experience that we had.

What did you like in particular about G-Star?

RB: What I really liked was the authenticity of the brand. I like that it’s very unapologetic and bold. They never really care and don’t really look at other brands. They have always been very true to their own DNA from the moment it was built. And that’s what we really like. And it’s about function, innovation and attitude.

LH: What sets G-Star apart from many other brands is that they don’t follow the fashion scene. And that’s the same for us.

It’s very interesting and we love that. It has a little bit of Dutch honesty. Some people say about the Dutch people “Oh, you’re so honest and direct.” And that’s really what G-Star is. And they’re a bit rebellious as well. And this is what we love as we are also that kind of people.

So it’s like what you see is what you get. And it’s like the underdog. Maybe not exactly, but they’re not participating in the fashion scene. This is what we love.

So that’s what you found in the end, because your dream has come true. As kids you redesigned their jeans and now you can actually work at them...

LH/RB: Exactly. Yes. Fantastic.

When will we see the first results of your work for the brand?

LH: We recently launched a new campaign—Anatomic Denim. That one is the first change is coming up, but it’s just the first one. When we arrived, for the first month, we did a lot of research. Since then we have been working with the teams and creating a little bit already to set the rhythm of where we want to go with the Raw Research collection. What we are doing here is really drafting, designing and recreating the Raw Research collection, which is a sort of pinnacle collection––an aspirational and directional collection that has the aim of showing where the company will move.

The company is very large. Its teams are large. Collections are large. So, of course, the other collections will move toward the direction that we set with Raw Research, a collection that will show twice a year.

In June 2025 we disclosed the first Raw Research small capsule collection of about 30-40 pieces. It will be leading in terms of innovation and we are introducing new cuts and fits. That one will arrive in the stores in January 2026, slightly before the official launch of G-Star’s new course at Paris Fashion Week to be also shown in January 2026. So it’s like hitting the market at the same moment.

Will there be more capsules throughout the year? Will you bring more changes in the structure of the collection?

LH/RB: We are working on mainly the two collections that are launching in January and June. Besides that, we are also working on capsule collections that spark, and that will drop at a very meaningful moment, having a very like intentional thought after.

We don’t want to drop because of making a drop. It needs to make sense. And then besides that, we are working on little capsule drops that feel right at the right time with the right concept.

Did you already work with denim before in your career?

LH/RB: Yeah, it was always the most picked garment in the showroom for Botter. We have always worked with denim and it was always part of our collection. And it was always fun because it was kind of like, it’s a material that you can play with. So whatever concept, whatever was running in the collection, it would have been like an extra that you can always amplify—pump it up or tone it down with denim. And we love the fact that denim is very democratic.

Considering you started working at G-Star’s pinnacle collection, will there be a change of target also in the main offer? What about the prices? Will they become higher?

LH/RB: If you mean for Raw Research? Probably it will be a little more expensive, but the main collection will stay the same. Still, we want that people can afford it. But it will be in stores like Dover Street Market, and those kinds of stores. Raw Research will have another distribution channel. You will find it in totally different and more aspirational stores as we also really want to emphasize the innovation. And innovation also comes with a certain price point.

So, yeah, it’s just part of the offer that we bring. So it will be a little bit more expensive than the main line, for sure. But not unreachable. It will not be super luxury, super expensive. We don’t think that’s modern.

G-Star is a very democratic brand so it would totally not make sense to all of a sudden propose something that’s not realistic. That would not lie in the DNA of G-Star.

So, for us, it’s just about giving honest prices with the innovations that we bring.

What about the brand’s identity and image? When will the Anatomic Denim campaign debut?

LH/RB: We shot the first campaign for Raw Research together with Peter Hugo and it will come out in January and it is mostly focused on the product. We really want to purify it, but we really captured and shared this kind of aesthetic also with Peter, focusing on this rawness, directness and having this kind of concrete vibe to it.

Three main founding elements defined G-Star’s past—raw denim, ergonomic shapes, and genderless fashion. Of course, men’s fits were different from women’s fits. How will these three aspects evolve?

LH/RB: They will stay there. These are main pillars for us too and they will remain, but what we want is a cultural aspect—the innovation. They were always innovative, but we want to bring modernity and innovation in a different way.

Can you explain more in detail?

LH/RB: Innovation is very important, but we are also very obsessed about craftsmanship, because denim is all about craftsmanship. It’s all about the right material, having the right treatment, having the right washes in the right areas in the right places. But it’s much more complex than what you would initially think, as it can go so much further. So, we are working with factories and mills and are creating innovative denim canvases.

It’s very important to us in terms of a cultural connection as we see denim as a living canvas. It breathes and lives around the human body. We think denim is one of the most changeable garments in terms of surfaces, because you wear it.

It’s not a garment that you wear once, but you wear it on a daily basis. So, it molds around the body, and this aspect is so interesting to us. We want to further investigate the human relation of the denim canvas with your body.

This is very interesting in terms of aspects like the 3D aspect, and where G-Star can move and understand how this canvas is going to go into someone’s life. How does that look, how does that wear down, how does that characterize itself and change and adapt to one’s body?

Is there anything G-Star needs to express its identity further?

LH/RB: We would like to focus more on the aspect that you cannot make fashion without adding emotion. Fashion is so tied to your emotion and to your well-being, and I think G-Star, at a certain point, can be a little bit cold and individualistic. What we want to bring is a little bit more of emotion and poetry, but always together with a strong technicality and industriality. It’s like juxtaposing the yin and the yang, minus and plus. This creates a perfect balance. So we want to bring more storytelling, more feeling. We believe that makes a brand connected on a deeper level with people. Especially with young kids.

Is that connected to the shopping experience? Will you open a flagship store that connects G-Star with the consumer more?

LH/RB: Yeah, that’s something we’re exploring. You need to have a space where you can connect with people, have the firsthand talk with people, see what they think, how they react to the product. But there are also consumers who are nostalgic and think of what G-Star was in the ’90s and maybe even before. But we need to capture that again now. So we need to invite people and make them feel the same energy, positivity and feeling we have with G-Star—the craftsmanship, the innovation, the storytelling and the cultural influence.

How do you create this cultural influence?

LH/RB: We think it is very important to show people that G-Star is very informed. The company has one of the largest archives of a total of 48,000 pieces between G-Star archive pieces and historical utility apparel, like field jackets that come from WWI and WWII. We want to show all the research behind the brand—ideas, pockets, detailing—it doesn’t come from nothing. It’s all very grounded. And yeah, we’re just very enthusiastic about that….

How will the jeanswear and SPORTSWEAR markets evolve?

LH/RB: What we see coming is that materials get increasingly smarter. They get smarter in terms of sustainability and treatments, for instance. So people will care a lot about the meaning of garments. They are asking themselves: Where does this come from? What does it represent? How is it made? So we think it’s not only about the performance of the garments, but it’s also much more about the connection and the purpose.

You buy something with a meaning, something because you can talk about it with your friends. “Hey, you know, look, I have this thing,” many like to say. It’s like a passion for what you’re wearing, why you bought it, because it has a reason. It’s something that has a story to tell, which is different from anything else, of course.

A few seasons ago G-Star was one of the first brands to present outfits created with AI. Will that influence the evolution of G-Star?

LH/RB: Sure. You always have to embrace new technologies and you don’t have to be scared of it.

Though we see it more as a tool but an idea never starts from AI. An idea starts with a feeling and with sensibility. We like to use it but we are also always asking ourselves how it can be implemented.

So it’s a research tool, but then you have to go back to the crafts, to your hands and you have to test it in real life. It’s a ping pong, and all about curation as well, and being able to control it.

Man’s power and man’s initiative is always the real driver, because you can find an input, you can find a suggestion, but then you rework it.