Sustainable Denim Push

Madewell has turned about 20,000 pairs of worn jeans into a new denim capsule with recycler Re&Up and fabric maker Isko. (reandup.com) The collection launched on April 8 on Madewell’s website and includes three online-only women’s styles priced at $158 each. (wwd.com) Those jeans came from Madewell’s Denim Trade Up take-back program, which has been running for more than a decade and gives shoppers $20 off a new pair when they bring in old denim. (madewell.com) Textile-to-textile recycling means an old garment is broken down and remade into fiber for another garment, instead of being turned into insulation or wiping cloths. Re&Up said it processed the used jeans into new cotton and polyester inputs, and Isko wove those into Global Recycled Standard-certified fabrics. (reandup.com) That shift is notable for Madewell because its trade-in program has long sent damaged denim to Cotton Incorporated’s Blue Jeans Go Green program, which recycles cotton denim into housing insulation. Madewell said gently worn pairs are also resold through Madewell Forever. (madewell.com) Madewell says it has collected more than 2.3 million preloved pieces through Denim Trade Up so far, which makes this capsule a small share of its total take-back volume. (madewell.com) The three new styles still use blends rather than 100 percent recycled denim. Madewell’s product pages list the Longline Straight at 71 percent recycled cotton, 24 percent viscose, 4 percent recycled polyester and 1 percent elastane, while WWD reported the Darted Barrel-Leg at 75 percent recycled cotton and 25 percent viscose. (madewell.com) (wwd.com) Re&Up said the technical problem is that post-consumer jeans arrive with different fiber mixes, stretch content, metal hardware and wear patterns, which makes them harder to recycle back into premium denim than factory scraps. (reandup.com) Madewell and Isko have worked together on lower-impact denim before, and this new run pushes that partnership further upstream into the brand’s own waste stream. For Madewell, the next test is whether a 20,000-pair capsule becomes a repeatable part of its denim business, not a one-off drop. (wwd.com)