Mill Memo: North American Producers on Cotton-Free and Circular Denim
Increasingly, mills are thinking beyond virgin cotton for denim. This might mean cottonless denim with materials like TENCEL™ Lyocell or hemp, or a mix of recycled textiles and wood-based fibers. Carved in Blue checked in with the TENCEL™ mill customers to chat about their cotton-free collections and circular fabrics.
Read on to hear from Cone, Global Denim, Tavex and Twin Dragon.
CONE
Pierette Scavuzzo, design director
Carved in Blue: Do you have a ‘No Cotton Denim’ fabric?
Pierette: While we currently don’t have a high demand for 100 percent “no cotton denim” fabrics out of our Mexico region, we have a fabric called Black Jack, which is part of our Nothing Goes To Waste fabric capsule. It has a 70/30 blend of TENCEL™ Modal and cotton. We use upcycled black dye waste, which is then converted into a new yarn, which calculates a 90 percent water savings compared to conventional dye methods. It is also soft, lightweight and has an excellent drape, making it ideal for Spring/Summer seasonal silhouettes.
Carved in Blue: For denim fabrics, what are you offering in TENCEL™ Lyocell for volume priced orders? What is your common TENCEL™ Denim base fabric?
Pierette: One of our most commercial TENCEL™ Lyocell products is a soft Coolmax performance stretch. Our 9136P product is an 11 oz., 35 percent stretch with great recovery. We feel this fabric’s success is due to its flexibility across gender, size and silhouettes, and it is the perfect pairing of performance, comfort and softness.
Carved in Blue: Circularity is the next frontier. What have you developed with mechanical recycled cotton and TENCEL™ Lyocell? What about chemical recycling with REFIBRA™ technology?
Pierette: We would like to spotlight our products Branson and Pinetop as a great example of a circular fabric blend. Branson is a lightweight, authentic rigid fabric with a blend of REFIBRA™, TENCEL™ Lyocell, American hemp and cotton. It is also dyed in USDA-certified natural indigo, which gives it an exceptional cast and truly is a dream combination. This fabric has a structured drape that is perfect for looser and baggy silhouettes and is very comfortable.
Pinetop is a lightweight undyed rigid ecru fabric with the same blend of cotton, TENCEL™ Lyocell, hemp and REFIBRA™. Pinetop is beautiful in its natural state and has a rich affinity for garment dye colors.
GLOBAL DENIM
Anatt Finkler, creative director
Carved in Blue: Do you have a ‘No Cotton Denim’ fabric?
Anatt: We do not have currently a no cotton denim fabric, but rather are focusing on our Ecoloop program meant for including recycled cotton to our fabrics.
Carved in Blue: For denim fabrics, what are you offering in TENCEL™ Lyocell for volume priced orders? What is your common TENCEL™ Denim base fabric?
Anatt: Our TENCEL™ Lyocell fabrics cater to a more premium market audience. We have a lot of styles that have come a long way with us and are a staple in some or our customers’ yearly buying programs.
Our common TENCEL™ denim-based fabric is 80 percent cotton, 18 percent TENCEL™ and 2 percent Lycra. This fabric has a weft of 50 percent TENCEL™ Lyocell and 50 percent cotton.
Carved in Blue: Circularity is the next frontier. What have you developed with mechanical recycled cotton and TENCEL™ Lyocell?
Anatt: At Global, we believe circularity is the most important thing to acquire and follow as a business, and because of this reason, we have worked hard to add a percentage of mechanically recycled cotton to all our fabrics. Most of our TENCEL™ Lyocell-based fabrics have from 5 to 20 percent recycled cotton, depending on the construction.
Our Circl group holds the most quantity of recycled cotton, blended with TENCEL™ Lyocell, with constructions such as 63 percent recycled cotton, 24 percent cotton and 13 percent TENCEL™. It not only has circularity and green practices behind them, but these fabrics have an amazing hand feel, strength and softness, not to mention they can come in an undyed version highlighting the natural color of the recycled yarn.
Carved in Blue: What about chemical recycling with REFIBRA™ technology?
Anatt: We currently are not working with REFIBRA™ technology but have plans to incorporate it for trials in the future.
TAVEX
Arlethe Sanchez, marketing manager
Carved in Blue: Do you have a ‘No Cotton Denim’ fabric?
Arlethe: Tavex launched our Cotton Less Denim collection in Fall 2020, which is achieved with the use of TENCEL™ Lyocell fiber instead of a traditional cotton blend.
This family was created to provide sustainable and wearable solutions for the growing conscious consumer demand. The acceptance was amazing, the main characteristics being soft hand and refined character.
The most successful fabric in this category is produced using 60 percent TENCEL™ Lyocell, 33 percent polyester, 5 percent elasterell-P and 2 percent spandex.
The marketing concept of Cotton Less Denim is supported by all the sustainable features of TENCEL™ fiber, such as: Its manufacturing requires less energy and water than cotton, and it’s biodegradable. TENCEL™ Lyocell has incredible absorption characteristics, it is 50 percent more absorbent than cotton, so it requires a lot less dye than cotton. Also, it is more breathable and less susceptible to odorous bacteria growth. In addition, Lenzing sources its wood from certified and controlled suppliers to guarantee the sustainable managed plantations.
Carved in Blue: For denim fabrics, what are you offering in TENCEL™ Lyocell for volume priced orders? What is your common TENCEL™ Denim base fabric?
Arlethe: Customers love denim fabrics with TENCEL™ Lyocell. It’s definitely an added value. Hence, Tavex created a product line specifically for articles with TENCEL™ content: Eco Stretch.
The purpose of this collection is to keep the customer comfortable in their day-to-day life while being conscious of our environment.
This family has an extensive offering of products with several colors (blues, blacks and ecru), a wide range of weights and stretches, and silhouettes for men’s and women’s. Every season we include updates to this collection due its popularity.
Our fabric for volume priced orders is a 3×1, dark pure indigo, with content of 70 percent cotton, 17 percent polyester, 11 percent TENCEL™ Lyocell and 2 percent spandex. It has a premium look and soft hand feel.
The most common denim base in this classification has a blend with cotton, TENCEL™ Lyocell, elasterell-P and spandex, with an average weight of 10 oz., developed in different intensities of blues, also offered in black and ecru colors. This base has a commercial appearance, soft hand feel, and is comfortable, with high stretch and great recovery. This fabric also offers a wide range of characteristics for garment wet processing, ranging from the most subtle process for the purist market to the more aggressive washes for the radicals, without losing the properties of the fabric and maintaining the life of the garment.
Carved in Blue: Circularity is the next frontier. What have you developed with mechanical recycled cotton and TENCEL™ Lyocell? What about chemical recycling with REFIBRA™ technology?
Arlethe: Apparel buying patterns follow a linear economic behavior. This buy-wear-dispose cycle generates millions of pounds of textile waste that generally end up in landfills and which take hundreds of years to disintegrate.
Tavex has made significant efforts to minimize its environmental footprint, not just by pioneering the use of sustainable raw materials and supplies, but also by implementing sustainable manufacturing processes and practices. This includes important investments in equipment and technology, from the use of renewable energy to power our operation, to cutting-edge technology to finish our products with significantly less water than traditional finishing technologies.
In 2021, Tavex introduced Renew, a family of products to incorporate sustainable practices. Renew products incorporate the use of recycled and sustainable elements, such as TENCEL™ Lyocell, Lycra Ecomade and Repreve.
Tavex has incorporated the use of recycled cotton fiber captured during our manufacturing process to create new products for years, even before the use of recycling fibers became fashionable in our industry.
Tavex understands the importance of designing products that inherently protect and preserve the environment, understanding that renew, reuse, recycle and repurpose is a safer bet.
TWIN DRAGON
Lisa Harris, senior director merchandising and marketing
Carved in Blue: Do you have a ‘No Cotton Denim’ fabric?
Lisa: TDMI is dedicated to preserving and protecting precious natural resources and producing the cleanest denim on earth.
First step is to start with clean and green fiber. Fiber that is biodegradable and eco-friendly, such as TENCEL™ Lyocell, will drastically help to offset the amount of water used in growing cotton. TENCEL™ Lyocell uses around 95 percent less water per pound than cotton, which is a paramount amount of water savings. By the end of 2023, we will reduce cotton usage to between 20-30 percent overall.
In addition to implementing more TENCEL™ Lyocell, we are blending in other eco fibers like recycled and biodegradable polyester, recycled cotton and hemp, creating a soft, luxurious denim with an old-school vintage aesthetic.
And finally, finishing fabrics with ozone, which is also saving water and energy not only from the fabric end but the garment processing end as well.