cotton:

It’s a soft, white, natural fibre from the fruit of the cotton plant, which can be made into textile fibre and thread for sewing. It is a popular fibre for textiles because of its comfort, breathability and durability. Cotton is grown on all continents, except Antarctica. The biggest cotton exporters are China, the United States, India and Pakistan, and depending on the region, the cotton will vary in softness, lustre, and durability. 

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hand-picked/Machine-picked cotton:

Hand-picking allows for easier separation of the most mature and most uniform cotton fibres (which are longer and stronger) without damaging them, while machine harvested cotton may be damaged by the equipment. An added bonus is the glossier sheen, as the fibres tend to be smoother and give the tread more lustre. However, picking by hand is harder manual labour. 

 

Once it is picked, the next steps include carding, inspecting, combing, opening, and blending. These steps essentially make the cotton clean and ready for the next transformation by removing all impurities and forming longer ‘fragments’. It can then be spun into yarn by combining the individual fibres and twisting them together.

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cotton & The environment:

Cotton can use up to 7,660 gallons of water to grow and produce 1 kilogram of fibre, depending on where it’s grown. (In comparison, producing 2.2 pounds of tomatoes requires one one-hundredth of that amount, 76 gallons.) The plant also requires the use of many fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, which can lead to health risks for the farm workers and residents. Cotton uses 16% of the world’s insecticides.

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cotton & Forced labour:

According to the Human Rights Coalition, one in five cotton garments in the global apparel market is linked to forced labour. Especially troubling is that many of the world’s leading clothing brands continue to source cotton and yarn produced through the pervasive forced labour of the Uyghur population and other Turkic and Muslim-majority peoples in the Xinjiang region in China (this represents close to 1.8 million people). 

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zimbabwean cotton:

Coveted by denimheads for its high-quality, Zimbabwean cotton is seen as controversial. While the country has an ideal climate for growing cotton, it is produced in small farms with little resources, so it is often picked and sorted by hand, which leads to concerns for the workers' health due to the use of insecticides. These concerns are further exacerbated by an apprehension for cotton as a byproduct of the brutal regime of Robert Mugabe now sustained by Emmerson Mnangagwa. In Zimbabwe, human rights are an afterthought, the country is rife with growing claims of torture and enforced disappearances. 

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Better cotton:

Better Cotton is a global not-for-profit organisation and the largest cotton sustainability programme in the world’ dedicated to making global cotton production better for the people who produce it, better for the environment it grows in and better for the sector’s future. (The Better Cotton Initiative).

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Denim & SLAVERY:

Most people see jeans as one of the most democratic items of clothing. Everyone wears jeans, regardless of gender, race, class, age, size… and all bodies look good in jeans! And yet, denim is deeply rooted in the antithesis of democracy: slavery. The two raw materials that make jeans so easily recognisable are cotton and indigo, both are intrinsically linked to the history of enslaved people in the United States.

 

The cotton industry thrived on slavery; bodies of the enslaved served as America’s largest financial asset, and the profits placed the US as one of the leading economies in the world and made the South its most prosperous region. Slaves from West Africa were forced to use their knowledge of the plant - its cultivation and use for dyeing - to benefit plantation owners. Indigo was such a profitable harvest in certain parts of the South that it was occasionally used as currency. 

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Originally, before Levi Strauss, denim was a poor quality cloth, most often made of cotton, linen, or hemp, that was used by slaveholders to clothe the enslaved. This early denim was sewn into simple but durable workwear by slaves themselves. (Underwood, 2019). It is important to note that the life story of the iconic blue jean is perpetually interwoven with slavery and the history of the African Diaspora. 

This is a complex subject to address in a few paragraphs which merits more attention. If you’d like to learn more, this discussion sheds light on some of these complexities and provides additional resources. This interview of American designer Tremaine Emory of Denim Tears speaking about his collaboration with Levis with the aim of shining a light on the brutal truth of the history of denim is also a good place to start.

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HEmp:

Hemp is a natural fibre, just as soft as cotton. Also like cotton, the material will get softer with each wash (though the process is slightly slower). Hemp is even stronger than cotton, which means your hemp jeans will last longer than the cotton ones. As an added bonus, hemp acts to regulate your temperature - ie, hemp jeans will keep you warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer!

 

Growing hemp is also much better for the environment than growing cotton: hemp only needs about half the amount of water to grow as cotton (and during the processing, hemp uses a quarter of the amount needed for cotton). It is very quick to mature (in only 3 to 4 months it is ready to be turned into fibre), and it is also more yielding than cotton: a single hemp plant gives 220% more fiber than a cotton plant!

 

It is also a durable rotation crop, which means that the soil fertility won’t be affected (whereas cotton ultimately damages the soil). In addition, the whole hemp plant is used in the growing process: the stalk becomes fibre, and the leaves can be planted in the soil again as a fertilizer, essentially helping the next cycle of hemp flourish. Lastly, hemp requires very little to no pesticides (whereas cotton relies heavily on herbicides and pesticides and fertilizer), making it a healthier crop for workers who are exposed to the pesticides.

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ELASTANE:

Elastane is an entirely synthetic fibre. It’s designed to be hyper-elastic, lightweight and resistant. It is often blended with other fibres, such as cotton, for more comfort. However, over time, it will wear down, and with simple everyday use from washing, these tiny pieces of plastic will make their way to the ocean, and eventually, become food for fish. These tiny pieces of plastic are called microplastics, and they inevitably end up polluting the environment. Almost 60 percent of the trash now found in our marine environments consists of non-biodegradable clothing fibers.

 

While elastane and other synthetic fibres have advantages that can’t necessarily be reproduced in natural, biodegradable materials, we must come to terms with the fact that our need for more comfortable clothing is negatively impacting marine life. 

 

Global elastane production is expected to increase 10% by 2023. 

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Microplastics:

These are very small pieces of plastic that pollute the environment. NOAA (the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and the European Chemicals Agency define this as any kind of plastic that is less than 5 mm in length. Synthetic textiles are a major source of microplastics, and our synthetic clothing sheds as many 700,000 fibers per wash. These inevitably end up in the ocean, hurting the wildlife. A recent study found microplastics in the stomachs of 73 percent of fish caught in the Northwest Atlantic.

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The weaving PROCESs

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Weaving:

To put it simply, weaving (in textile production) is a process of interlacing two different sets of yarn (the warp and the weft) that meet at a 90 degree angle to create fabric.

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warp:

The warp refers to the vertical threads on a loom, over and under which other threads (the weft) are passed to make cloth.

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weft:

The horizontal threads used on a loom, by passing them over and under the warp threads to weave cloth.

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tying:

A crucial step in preparing the loom, in this step, the warp is tied in order to be able to weave, and partly determines the design of the textile. 

​Before, the tying-in process was done manually, which as you can imagine, took up a lot of time. But in the 1930s, new technology brought the automatic tying-in machine, which can knot all kinds of warp yarns in different materials and thickness quite fast, some machines able to make 60 to 600 knots per minute. Some mills still use the manual tying in process though. 

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twill:

A fabric woven with vertical warp and horizontal weft threads overlapping in such a way to create a surface of diagonal parallel ridges, resulting in an incredibly sturdy denim fabric. The most common type of twill for denim is 3×1 (pronounced ‘three by one’) right hand twill, which means that on the fabric’s face (the front), there are three warp yarns for every weft yarn. Occasionally denim is 2×1 twill, where there are two warp yarns for every weft yarn. The result is a resistant, durable fabric with two different sides. One side showing more warp yarn (i.e. dark blue) is used as the outward-facing side, and the side with mostly visible weft yarn is the back (i.e. light blue). 

 

shed:

This is a temporary separation between upper and lower warp yarns through which the weft is woven, thus going over certain sets of warp yarns and under the others to weave the fabric. The shed makes it easier to pass the shuttle back and forth.  

 

shuttle:

An elongated, thin bobbin with two pointed ends used for carrying the weft thread back and forth across the shed to weave in the yarn.

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Fabric fINISHES

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raw denim:

Raw Denim refers to denim that hasn’t been washed or treated - it is essentially untouched once it is woven. This may seem uncommon today, but until the 1970s, this was the only kind of denim available. Raw denim is especially coveted by denimheads. It is sometimes called ‘dry denim’ or ‘unwashed denim.’ Because it is unwashed, it can feel stiff, and might leave traces of its indigo dye on surfaces. Denimheads see the immense benefit in raw denim: as you wear the jeans, they slowly lose the dye and fade in places. The jeans document the traces of the body and movements and become unique to the wearer. 

 

There are additional benefits in using raw denim: saving water; using less chemicals and less potentially dangerous manual labour; and ultimately providing greater durability (and therefore more wears). 

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A pair of raw denim jeans will save an additional 42 litres of water compared to a washed and pre-distressed pair. For pre-distressed denim, certain additional chemicals are used to treat the fabric, not to mention more manual labour and potential exposure to harmful substances. 

Because the fabric has not been artificially lasered, stonewashed or sandblasted (therefore intentionally damaged), the fabric is intact and will last much longer. 

 

denimhead:

Someone who’s immensely passionate about denim, and who might exclusively wear raw denim while limiting washes in order to get the perfect fades.

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Sanforising:

A process to treat cotton fabrics in order to reduce the amount of shrinkage that would otherwise occur after the first wash. This helps make sure that the fabric won’t shrink more than 5% after the first wash, rather than around 10% for unsanforised fabrics. In this process, the fabric is treated with water or steam to induce shrinkage, and then pressed against a heated rubber band to relax and recontract the fibers.

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Sandblasting:

Sandblasting is a process of blasting denim with sand in order to artificially obtain a lived-in, worn-in look. The process can be extremely dangerous for workers: silica dust can be inhaled if not adequately protected, damaging the lungs and resulting in silicosis. A 2015 study showed that this was almost inevitable among denim sandblasters. 

 

Because of the high risks for workers, many manufacturers banned the practice in 2009 and by the next year, major denim brands including Levi-Strauss & Co, H&M, Armani and Versace had all announced their own bans. However, with the common practice of subcontracting work, it is difficult to verify that the practice has stopped.

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Silicosis:

Lung fibrosis caused by the inhalation of dust containing silica.

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