Blue Cast: Warp + Weft and DL1961’s Sarah Ahmed Discusses Performance Denim
Denim has been part of Sarah Ahmed’s life from a young age. As a child, she was exposed to the business through her parents’ company Artistic Denim Mills.
Today, Sarah is on the brand side as the CEO and founder of Warp + Weft and the chief creative officer of DL1961. Both New York-based labels were founded by ADM as a way to have direct-to-consumer relationships via its denim.
“I love working with my family, because we have a very shared ambition of what we want our lives to look like, and also what kind of product we want to create and how we want to deliver it to our customers,” said Sarah during the most recent episode of our Blue Cast podcast. “Having that sort of funnel directly to the consumer has been one of the most gratifying experiences because as a manufacturer, you’re largely working with bigger brands, and you’re left sort of in the background, and you really don’t get that response directly from the customers.”
Warp + Weft and DL1961 specialize in high performance denim, with features such as 360-degree movement. The brands are also pushing innovation to achieve both performance and sustainability.
By teaming up with Recover, the labels have been able to replace some of the cotton in jeans with up to 30 percent post-consumer fabric waste. With this, Sarah says they have developed the first circular, high-performance jean.
Another area of material innovation is the use of Lenzing fibers, including TENCEL™. “[Lenzing has] been very key to our innovation when it comes to fabric, fit, function and really giving the customer that superior softness,” said Sarah.
ADM is based in Pakistan—and therefore, so is the production for Warp + Weft and DL1961. Sarah noted that there had been a stigma surrounding producing in Pakistan, but it is fading. The country has been able to grow from the globe’s second biggest producer to the leading nation in denim.
“With an increased consumer awareness, demand and transparency has been actually very good for us,” said Sarah. “Because that has moved the political stigma away.”
Listen to the full episode here.
BLUE CAST by TENCEL™, a podcast series created on Carved in Blue by the TENCEL™ denim team sharing in-depth talks to the denim community at large, and the Fashion Impact Fund, a charitable fund supporting women entrepreneurs to accelerate the fashion industry’s transition to an ecosystem that values people and planet, have collaborated on a special edition five-part podcast series named ‘Solutionist’ in honor of Women’s History Month.