Sustainable Fashion Brands Team Up to Make Custom-Fit Jeans

The exploitation, waste and carbon footprint of the fast fashion industry is well documented. According to research from Princeton University, 20% of the world’s wastewater comes from the fast fashion industry, which is also a leading producer of microplastics that wind up in the ocean. While consumers might be aware of this problem, it's hard for the average shopper buying a pair of jeans to feel like they can make much of a difference. At the same time, it's hard for brands to see an alternative to these systems that's financially viable. But with a partnership announced today, two burgeoning apparel brands are hoping to solve both problems, addressing the environmental harms of apparel manufacturing while offering consumers an easier way to buy ecologically responsible products. Pangaia, a two-year-old apparel brand that uses recycled and eco-friendly components, is introducing a new denim fabric called Panhemp. That material will be available on Unspun, an AI-powered company that uses body scans to customize its made-to-order jeans. Sustainability and New Revenue Streams Are Driving Brands to Online Resale Marketplaces Ending the guessing game Inventory waste was first brought to the attention of Beth Esponnette, co-founder and chief product officer at Unspun, while she was working at an outdoor apparel brand years ago. When discussing what to do with excess product, executives presented the team with three options: "We can send these to landfill, we can incinerate them, or we can ship them off to a developing country," Esponnette recalled. "I just remember being flabbergasted." While many sustainability-minded brands are now working to reduce waste and to handle excess inventory more responsibly through discount sales or recycling, Unspun aims to address the root of the problem: the inventory guessing game. That's essentially the industry standard, and has been for decades. "We take a guess about how many pieces we should produce," explained Jonathan Cheung, denim designer and adviser to both Pangaia and Unspun. "It's like the village baker guessing how many loaves of bread should he or she bake and trying to estimate the closest they can get to selling out. "Those estimates are wildly and almost tragically optimistic," Cheung added. "For most brands, we overproduce." Instead of guessing, Unspun's model allows for each person's order to be made as it's placed—and custom designed for that person's body to all but ensure a perfect fit at any size and shape. The new line of custom denim made with Pangaia's Panhemp material will be available to order on the Unspun app starting Nov. 11. View this post on Instagram A post shared by unspun (@unspun.io) Incentivizing sustainable decision-making in consumers Beyond the environmental savings related to inventory waste, the made-to-order model also better connects consumers to the impact of clothing production, according to Neeru Paharia, an associate professor at Georgetown University who studies consumer behavior related to sustainability. "If you walk into a Walmart and all the clothes have already been made, the damage has been done," Paharia explained. Consumers choosing something ready-made from a shelf don't feel a lot of agency over its production simply because the environmental impacts and potential labor exploitation happened long before—and often far away from—the point of purchase. In her research, Paharia found that consumers are more likely to pay more for an ethically or sustainably made item if it's their decision that's triggering that item's production. "If you order that product, you're causing it to be made, and so then the sustainability elements of those products become more relevant to you," she said. "In that case people are actually willing to pay more for sustainability attributes." To order a custom pair of jeans from Unspun, consumers anywhere in the world can use an iPhone X or higher with facial recognition to scan their bodies through the app. Body scans are also available at the brand's brick-and-mortar locations in San Francisco and Hong Kong, ongoing pop-up shops in London and Amsterdam, and yet-to-be-announced pop-ups to promote the collaboration with Pangaia. View this post on Instagram A post shared by PANGAIA (@pangaia) Designing with end-of-life in mind Pangaia's new material, Panhemp, combines Turkish hemp, French cotton and Indian indigofera tinctoria dye to create a fully plant-based denim, according to Cheung. The sewing thread is 100% Giza cotton, with no polyester core. "What we wanted to do is bring something that was unique to the market," he said, "something that is different and arguably has improvements on just conventional denim." Because it's cellulose-based, the denim can be recycled into other fabrics like viscose, and will decompose more quickly than fabrics that include polyester or spandex. But Cheung also noted that they're made to last decades—so recycling won't likely be happening for a while. "We're hoping recycling [of these garments] is done by our grandchildren," he said. In addition to the line of custom-made Panhemp jeans debuting on Unspun, Pangaia has its own collection of Panhemp denim pants and jackets available on its online store beginning today. This Brand Is Bringing Sugarcane-Based Bra Cups to Walmart in the Name of Sustainability 'Industrial Revolution 3.0' Looking ahead, Unspun plans to start using 3D weaving machines to scale its custom-made clothing operations more quickly. So far, the three-year-old company has two machines on hand, and hopes to start using them to fulfill orders as soon as next year. Fully automating the process will reduce the cost and lead time of making the garments, Esponnette said, but it also has the ability to slash the carbon footprint of apparel production and eliminate scrap waste. "Our goal at Unspun is to reduce global carbon emissions by 1%," Esponnette said. "If we were able to apply our technology across the industry, then we could get it closer to a 1 gigatonne reduction every year." For Cheung, 3D printing represents a new frontier in the world of apparel manufacturing, which has relied on traditional fabric weaving methods for hundreds of years. "I'm in complete wonderment about it," he said. "As a designer, it's Industrial Revolution 3.0." How Two Agency Strategists Embarked on a Quest to Find and Sell the Best Denim on Earth

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Kathryn Lundstrom