AGI Denim, a leading denim manufacturer, announces collaborating with a sustainable fashion brand Triarchy to create a fully recyclable denim collection. The 5-piece capsule “Cellsius: Designing with The Earth in Mind” comprises a jean, a jacket, a tunic dress, a pair of shorts, and a vest. Cellsius is sold exclusively at Neiman Marcus stores and online at triarchy.com.
The vertical denim manufacturer approached this project by assembling a coalition of the industry’s most innovative raw materials producers and technology suppliers. Stakeholders for this project include Renewcell for fiber, Coats for thread, Jeanologia for laser and dry process, and Kaiser for chemistry. The collection has been manufactured under Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s The Jeans Redesign guidelines, ensuring the garments consider circularity from production to the end of the product lifecycle.
Ahmed Javed, Executive Director of AGI Denim, stated, “Responsible manufacturing has been a core belief for us. We have put this into practice when it comes to our production methods, and we are excited to showcase this in the final product.
Creating a biodegradable garment and disassembling it in just a few steps is a radical innovation. We are grateful that our supply chain partners helped make this a reality.
We hope this collaboration acts as a blueprint for scaling circular manufacturing as it creates a business model that can bring about collective action for better clothes.”
The collaboration begins with fiber, one of the essential ingredients in fabric. AGI Denim taps into award-winning innovator Renewcell. The fabric is made with a 100% cellulosic blend, consisting of 70% organic cotton, 9% Circulose® a recycled material from textile waste, and 21% viscose from sustainably managed forests.. No synthetic fibers were used in the fabric.
Mechanical recycling initially required tearing facilities to discard synthetic garments portions, including polyester pocket linings and threads. Using cotton, the pocketing in these garments supports the process by reducing waste.
The garments are then sewn using Coats EcoCycle threads, which can be dissolved at the end of the lifecycle by immersing the garment at 100°C for 20 minutes. Coats is a pioneer in performance materials and offers safe solutions for companies worldwide. As Coats’ exclusive partner, AGI Denim extended support during research for the feasibility of these threads within a denim use case.
Finishing in denim laundries is a critical process that adds embellishments consumers love to their jeans. Manufacturers use a combination of dry and wet processes to achieve these fashion effects. For the Cellsius collection, laser tech from Jeanologia was used for an eco-friendly dry process. Jeanologia helps level up the collection with its cutting-edge machinery and expansive technical knowledge about garment production.
The wet process uses ozone bleach and stone-free enzymes from Kaiser, a leading sustainable laundry auxiliaries and colorants provider. These are efficient and eliminate the use of harmful chemicals.
AGI Denim exclusively used its Refresh technology recycled water for this production, from dyeing and finishing the fabric to washing the jeans, eliminating freshwater use. This remarkable achievement in sustainable garment production highlights the industry’s commitment to reducing water waste.
Where jeans and jackets commonly have metal and plastic zippers, the pieces in the Celsius collection use buttons made from lyocell fiber and are biodegradable.
This collaboration represents a step forward towards responsible fashion. Recyclable products make a strong case for the industry to take inspiration from and scale up circular production.
As AGI Denim and Triarchy continue to work towards creating environmentally friendly products, this collaboration showcases the opportunities that lie ahead for the fashion industry.
