Tenue de Nîmes - denim shop in Amsterdam

ne of the shopping related highlights of my visit in Amsterdam back in April was Tenue de Nîmes where I had a chat with co-owner Rene Strolenberg. The shop is beyond compare the best denim shop in the city and I actually visited it nothing less than three times during the weekend I spent there. I just had to get back to have another look. But the greatest feature of the shop is actually not all the premium denim brands themselves, it’s how they’re mixed in with each other. You have high-end classic Momotaro jeans right next to fashionable skinny Acne jeans. And with every visit you discover something new.

Both Rene and his partner Menno van Meurs are hardcore denim fetishists, but they wanted to create a high-end denim shop without being too snobby about it. In Rene’s words there are a lot of shops that sell nice denim, but many of them have a certain kind of arrogance about it and act like they are the best. Instead, Rene and Menno wanted to create a place where people could share their passion for jeans. Basically Tenue de Nîmes is a denim heaven for everybody and not just the insiders.

It’s all about opening the horisont of the customers by pushing their bunderies and changing their prejudices. Maybe you can make a denim nerd happy about a pair of Acne jeans or maybe you can make the guy who’d normally buy a pair of Average Joe from Nudie try on a pair of Momotaros. At least you can drop your guards and try.