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25th Sep 2019
Question: when is a pair of jeans not just a pair of jeans? Answer: in 2019, when denim’s eco issues are well known. Perhaps you’ve heard that in parts of China you can tell the colours of the season by looking at the rivers. Or that, from cotton field to finished garment, it can take up to 10,000 litres of water to produce a single pair of jeans. It’s getting harder to evaluate the clothes we buy on aesthetics alone.
Of course, the quest for the perfect fit remains. “That’s not going anywhere,” says Emanuel Chirico, CEO of PVH Corp, which owns Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein. “It will always matter most how great they look, but there’s an increasing awareness, not just for the customer but for our own associates [employees], that environmental impact is critical, particularly around water.”
Chirico is big on what his people care about; he’s the charismatic guy from the Bronx who invites everyone to call him Manny. He’s been CEO for 13 years and with the company for 26. “I used to walk the floors and know everyone. Now we’re on five continents, I can’t do that, but I’m still listening to what motivates our people. Sustainability is one of those things. People want to work for a company they can be proud of.”
In May, Chirico unveiled an ambitious, group-wide sustainability strategy called Forward Fashion, which aims to “transform how clothes are made and (re)used” across its portfolio. Denim is a major focus. “It can be water-intensive and polluting,” he says. “The industry has really started to tackle the chemical side. It’s about having clear targets and proper systems in the factories we work with. We’ve had a dramatic impact on the water area already, and as a company we’ve decided that’s going to be a leading issue for us.”
In 2015, Tommy Hilfiger partnered with World Wildlife Fund to help drive sustainable management of China’s Taihu River and Vietnam’s Mekong River basin. Last year, PVH extended this program to support water conservation in Ethiopia’s Lake Hawassa and India’s Cauvery River basins.
The next big challenge is circularity. Tommy Hilfiger has joined Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s new Jeans Redesign initiative, which sets goals for garment durability, material health, recyclability and traceability.
While the race is on industry-wide to introduce recycled fibre content, percentages have remained low for quality reasons. Mechanical recycling involves tearing fabric apart in a shredder, but often the re-spun yarn is weaker.
Technicians in PVH’s state-of-the-art Denim Center in Amsterdam are developing more efficient processes, and Tommy Jeans introduced 100 per cent recycled cotton denim styles for spring/summer ’19.
They’re revolutionising the finishing processes, too. No more pumice stones. New washing technologies slash water and chemical use by more than two thirds. Laser machines target only the indigo dye, not the fibres, to achieve fading effects. Ozone technology can even create that distressed denim look using no water at all.
What Chirico gets most animated about is recycling the water. New treatment systems can filter and recycle all the water from the denim washing machines, removing fibres, chemicals and dye. The clean water is re-used for the next wash, while the residue is compressed and used by other companies to produce asphalt.
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Is this what the future looks like? “Why not?” he says. “Who would have thought when I was growing up in the 70s that we’d be recycling garbage now? You just threw the garbage out. Things change. It takes time, but we can make it happen.”
This article originally appeared in Vogue Australia’s October 2019 issue.