Blue Cast: Jeanerica’s Jonas Clason on Making Desirable Sustainable Denim
Blue Cast is a podcast series from the TENCEL™ Denim team. Each episode features a conversation with a special guest from within the industry or the fringes of the denim community. The following is a recap of episode 404.
As the denim industry embraces innovation, it needs to keep its sights on product appeal at the same time, according to Jeanerica co-founder and creative director Jonas Clason.
This comes into play as companies seek to swap out cotton for other fibers, including recycled fibers and viscose. Jeans still must feel good and be “beautiful.” “It can be super sustainable in any way but if it doesn’t match the taste of people, nobody would pick it up,” Jonas told Lenzing’s Tuncay Kilickan during the latest episode of our Blue Cast podcast.
Over the course of Jonas’ career, he has gone from starting on the shop floor to building brands. About three decades ago, Jonas moved to Stockholm and worked at retailer Gul & Blå. He then spent six years as a buyer for fast-fashion juggernaut H&M. Following H&M, Jonas joined with Roland Hjort and Lena Patriksson Keller to launch his first brand, the fashion label Whyred, in 1999. This label was a contemporary of brands like Acne Studios. “The fashion industry was booming in Sweden and Scandinavia at that point and the sky was really the limit,” said Jonas.
After exiting Whyred, Jonas joined with a different friend, Maj-La Pizzelli, to found sustainable leather goods label ATP Atelier. He was also head of denim at Acne Studios and the creative manager of denim mill Isko. Today, Jonas’ work is centered on Jeanerica, the denim brand he launched in 2018 with his Whyred co-founder Lena.
The concept behind Jeanerica is to create European-style denim for a fashion customer. Since Jeanerica debuted recently, sustainability was a given, and it has framed how the brand approaches everything from trims to packaging and shipping. “Being from Scandinavia, you can’t start a denim brand in 2018 and not have [sustainability] as an important part of it,” he said. “It’s just a base that you need to respect and that you need to work on.”
Producing sustainably comes with added costs and higher prices, but unlike fast fashion that encourages constant repurchasing, Jeanerica’s denim is made to be durable. “[Denim] is a product that’s supposed to last for a long time,” Jonas said. “If you don’t put love into it, it will not last, and that love means into patterns and cuttings and finishes and fabrics.”
Although denim is a classic piece, Jonas believes there is still a way to make it interesting and modern. “Wardrobe staples or commodities doesn’t mean that it’s boring,” he said. “It just means that it’s a product that you want to use for a very long time, and that could be fashionable as well.”
Listen to the entire episode here.