Denim days.

So when that previously long held belief and ideology is turned on its head, and word gets out that the very thing that was once the hallowed, the revered, the treasured, and the most practical to wear as well as the most electrically fashionable, and wholesomely irreverent to boot, at the same time as being of infinite status-giving (where such qualities are often mutually exclusive and rarely combine)-

when it’s suddenly proclaimed that this sovereign piece of a national treasure, standard bearer of the new world and the emancipated West (since World War II), that this piece of what was once considered blue gold is no longer- now the alleged perpetrator of the world ill- meaning, the eco crisis - from its every aspect, start to finish - at every stage of its manufacture and consumption - from the farming up, to its water usage, to its earth-slaying insecticides, to its manifest contribution to the world’s polluted waterways and oceans, to the growing toxic and micro-plastic waste, and to none other and no less than – yes, carbon emissions- then of course the loyalties start to shift, to maybe a begrudging acceptance at first, then to a guilty acceptance and maybe a guilty pleasure, but then not pleasurable at all, and then outlawed, cancelled.

And next follows the question of what else do you wear.

But, and this is a ‘But’ with a capital ‘B’. Are the alternatives genuinely an improvement, all things considered? Truly holistically speaking?

If for example it’s pared down to the bare bones, the bare facts, taking out the heady, reactive political and emotive response, with some of the hysteria removed, and with truly long term foresightedness in mind and all things accounted for, for a thorough and objective take at the full length of the life cycle of a given pair of these things, then how would it fare then?
Do you think?

And there we have it indeed. Stop. Time out. Need to think clearly, beyond the trees. What is it about denim that has suddenly made it so evil? And conversely, if you can wear the same single pair of jeans every day (or most days), day in day out (as literally you can, for example that favourite pair of yours), or for weeks if not months on end-

and still the need to wash them is less, and still they continue to wear, and not wear out, looking good on you if not better, improving all the while with age and your wear, then surely there- that’s a part of the answer right there?

Now take a look at what’s happening to some of the old brandished specimens from the 60s and 70s, or the 80s and 90s even in some cases– Levis, Wrangler, Lee and a whole raft of genuine vintage jeans that end up in great piles at vintage warehouses, many of which are there alas on a detour from their eventual destination that great and mighty landfill you know- and how these are now, suddenly, being actively withdrawn from the heap, and repurposed, recycled and up-cycled, then re-circulated into society as cool, on-trend new it-jeans or jeans derivatives such as denim skirts, shirts, dresses, totes, curtains or upholstery or even used usefully as thermo insulation in the construction industry, for example.

Underpinning all of which is the fact that denim is at source a tougher, more durable fabric and in some cases lasts longer than we do ourselves.

Next let’s take a look at why jeans are so harmful in the first place, and lets try to be as objective as possible about that too.

It starts with the farming of the cotton (and the harmful, non-sustainable use of pesticides, the use of inordinate amounts of water, and copious land usage), then there’s the dyeing of the yarn (the toxicity of the indigo and chemicals used), and then the industrial laundry and the finishes (stone-washing to soften the jeans, ageing effects such as whiskers, and hand-sanding, and the potassium permanganate sprays and the bleach that’s used to create that fade and worn-in look, so sought after for decades now).

But- in fact- this wasn’t always the case with denim. In what is in my view it’s halcyon days – in its latter stages the 1930s to the 1970s – but indeed going all the way back to denim’s origins in the 1500s – cotton was farmed de rigeur more sustainably, and there were fewer if not zero chemicals or treatments involved. While it is also true that today new technologies are evolving so that whiskers, hand-sanding, the sprays and the bleach can now all be achieved through non-environmentally harmful processes such as laser technology and enzymes, and that these are being widely adopted today by the industry at large, nevertheless- and this is the key- the type of denim that was produced then (in the halcyon days) was actually, in essence, a different kind of denim, and with a different kind of integrity, and a different kind of life-cycle, that meant that not only was it produced more sustainably in the first place, but that it would also be loved, and treasured for years if not decades, hard wearing but also intrinsically beautiful and precious enough that it would be kept in circulation if at the very least as a collectible, capable and worthy of being passed down the generations (as indeed has happened). Problems started, unbeknown at the time, with the sudden and sheer ubiquity of demand for denim in the ‘80s.

site edited by Sheel Khemka BA (OXON)

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