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It’s hard to find the perfect pair of jeans. So often, they’re a little too snug at the waist or a little too straight in the leg. Maybe the wash is slightly off or there’s a zip where you want buttons — or buttons where you want a zip. More often than not, when you think you’ve finally found the pair, they’re just not quite right.
Elena Bonvicini thinks she has the answer — and she wants everyone to wear her jeans. She knows what jeans Gen Z want to wear because she’s always been EB Denim’s consumer. When she started selling re-worked denim in her high school locker room, she was the customer. In college, she sold her pieces to her sorority sisters, same thing. Now, she’s stocked in wholesalers like Revolve and Saks and has famous faces, including Kaia Gerber, Lily-Rose Depp and Kylie Jenner, not just wearing her jeans, but buying them themselves (Bonvicini has seen all of their names in her Shopify). “I want to walk down the street and see all of the girls wearing EB denim,” she says.
Being her own consumer, Bonvicini says, is EB Denim’s secret sauce. “I am the customer. She’s my friends — I know her so well,” she says. “A lot of these other denim brands don’t have that direct lens.” The brand’s revenues (which Bonvicini declined to share) have more than doubled in the past two years, with DTC up 4X in this period. The brand is on track to be an eight-figure business by 2026.
Next, EB Denim will land its first store. Bonvicini didn’t plan on opening a store, but while searching for a bigger office in Los Angeles, she happened upon her dream space in La Brea, 10 minutes from her home.
“I was flirting with the idea of appointment-only to make a really beautiful showroom that I could have VIPs, influencers, customers, press and buyers [stop by],” she says. “And then I came across this space and it was immediately one of those kismet moments where you’re like, ‘that’s the one. I found this space.’ And it was the perfect place for a warehouse, our office, a second-floor design studio, and the front of house is the store.”
When Bonvicini found the space, she posted a teaser on Instagram of the floor’s green tiles, asking if anyone would help her fit it out. Her friend Becky Hearn responded, and they got to work. She’s been in her office upstairs for four months now, but the store took time to get right.
When we speak, she’s waiting on a marble fixture to go on the shop floor, which is currently held up in customs. She’s hoping it comes on time for the store’s opening party on 4 September, before the official 5 September opening date. (It wound up arriving the day before the party.)
The La Brea space isn’t just a store. On a makeshift iPhone tour, Bonvicini walks me through the building, starting in the downstairs office space, going back to the warehouse, where all of EB’s denim is shipped from, then to the shop floor, upstairs to Bonvicini’s design studio, which looks onto the store over an open balcony. It’s an EB Denim clubhouse, of sorts, designed to strengthen Bonvicini’s connection with her shoppers even further. Or, as Bonvicini puts it, it’s “a place for the whole ecosystem of EB Denim”.
Close knit
As denim brands navigate fast-changing — and increasingly less clear-cut — trends (from skinny to baggy to everything in between) and vie for attention and spend from younger consumers, Bonvicini believes that this direct line of contact gives EB Denim an edge. Where established denim companies rely on splashy celebrity campaigns (for better, in the case of Gap’s Katseye campaign; or worse, in American Eagle’s Sydney Sweeney ‘Good Jeans’ fiasco), Bonvicini relies more on word of mouth, social media tags and It-girl clout by way of viral paparazzi photos rather than paid adverts. (She cites Taylor Swift’s outing in her Corset Dress as one of the brand’s milestones.)
Bonvicini is quick to make tweaks to the brand — product and business — based on this feedback loop. Last year, she lowered prices to gain more market share. “I wanted to sit just under $300, because we were sitting at $350, $395,” she recalls. The decision followed a poll of friends whom she asked what they thought was preventing EB Denim from growing to twice the size. “Every single one of them said that the prices were too high for some people to justify,” she says. “So we fixed it. And I think that’s partly why our direct-to-consumer has flourished in this past year.”
EB Denim’s boots on the ground perspective, Bonvicini thinks, is also what has enabled EB Denim to stay ahead of the curve. As denim trends move so fast that almost every cut is always in style, Bonvicini prioritises designs that she and her peers want to wear at a given moment. While larger conglomerates are moving in the direction of having all styles available at all times, EB Denim zeroes in on styles that Bonvicini expects to sell well because it’s what she wants to put on herself.
“I put out a low-rise baggy jean five years ago,” she says. “Now everyone has a low-rise baggy jean.” She released bootcut jeans over a year ago. In 2025, they’re “back”. Now, she has skinnies on the way, because that’s what she wants to wear. “I want to be in a freaking skinny jean right now with a big boot and a heel and look hot,” she says. “And I think the brands that are positioned to be ‘for’ this generation aren’t providing that sometimes.”
DTC darling
This direct relationship with her consumers is what Bonvicini has been missing as of late. “It’s so important to get that direct feedback and see people’s reaction when they’re trying something on,” she says. “I think it’s the magic that makes amazing clothes.”
Bonvicini cites getting Revolve and Selfridges accounts in early 2021 as the point at which the brand levelled up. It was also the point at which DTC took a backseat. “A little part of me put DTC on the back burner,” she says. “We were seeing so much business and demand in the wholesale space. And then it wasn’t until from there that I was like, what’s my next step into scaling this business?” In 2021, she shifted from re-worked vintage to originals. And the wholesale deals kept coming.
But the deals did very little for the EB Denim business, Bonvicini says. “I feel like I’ve been burned by wholesale. The margins aren’t as strong,” she says. “Sometimes they never pay you,” she adds, with a knowing look. “In the DTC business, you’re paid the next day. The margins are amazing. You can be a lot more reactive.” This past year especially, aside from Revolve, wholesale has been more stagnant, Bonvicini says. “Aside from the marketing and the credibility, it is not like it’s making any financial difference to my business,” she says matter-of-factly. “And [with] the terms that they ask emerging brands to abide by, it’s almost like you’re losing money.”
So this year, Bonvicini pivoted, scaling back wholesale partners to those who are helping to grow awareness (and sales). Meanwhile, she has put almost all of her energy into DTC, elevating the brand’s e-commerce presentation and investing in more digital advertisements, which she has seen major growth from. This was part of a strategic shift to DTC, comprising 50 per cent of this business in 2025, up from 30 per cent in 2023. The brand’s DTC business has grown 3X year-on-year, and DTC will finish fiscal 2025 with sales up almost 300 per cent on the year prior. The store marks the next phase of this growth.
“A giant test lab”
This first store is a test lab, in more ways than one.
Everything in the store has an element of test and react, Bonvicini says, from the product to the store itself. “It’s one gigantic test lab,” she says. “I could put one sample on a rack and observe how consumers interact with it, which will tell me so much.” And all going well, she plans to open a second store in New York in the near term.
Having all of EB Denim’s operations — store included — in one place will change the way the designer works, she expects. When influencers and stylists come into the store, she’ll invite them upstairs to show them what she’s working on and get feedback on the products. She’ll pop downstairs to chat to customers as well. “Is it a quarter inch too tight on the thigh? I want to know every single detail so that I can make the product better,” she says. “Literally, the information will go directly upstairs and it will be in the next production.”
It’ll also be a chance for Bonvicini to foster community around the brand. “We’ve never really done a major collaboration, so hopefully this will be the space where we’re having events with our partners, bringing in new product categories,” she says. “This will change my life. I’m so excited to see where we’re at a month from now; a year from now.”
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