Top: Moda INTL via Goodwill | Jeans: c/o DSTLD | Shoes: TOMS

photography by Xandra Beverlin 

You could definitely say I’m a denim girl. I have three denim jackets, three pairs of boyfriend jeans, jean shorts, jean skirts, skinny jeans — the list goes on. So it was definitely a shock to my system when I learned that denim production is one of the most polluting processes in the fashion industry. I’ve talked about denim production’s insane water usage before in my Sustainable Denim Diaries series (and there’s literally an entire documentary about denim production called RiverBlue), but I haven’t quite touched on how much the denim production process relies on human capital.

If you think about all of the details that go into a pair of jeans — the dyeing, the distressing, the pocket detailing, the zipper or button closure, the belt loops — it becomes clear that even the simplest pair of jeans can take a lot of time and energy to put together. As consumer expectations have shifted rapidly due to the proliferation and popularity of fast fashion, brands throughout the industry have been forced to rethink their business models.

Mateo Juarez, the owner of a South Los Angeles denim factory, discussed the cost of producing denim;

“If you make blue jeans in China, including the fabric washes, it is $6. If you do the same jeans in Mexico, you can make it for $10, which includes dropping if off here in Los Angeles. And if you do it in the USA, you are looking at $40 to $50. That’s a big difference”

As consumers are demanding cheaper and cheaper clothing on a shorter and shorter time span, shifting production abroad has been the best option for many brands. Not only are environmental standards different around the world, but working conditions for garment workers differ widely across the world. The Rana Plaza factory collapse in 2013 shed light on the conditions that garment workers are subject to in Bangladesh, and we even heard about iPhone production factory workers committing suicide in 2010 in China, but garment workers are also being treated unfairly in the United States. Read this LA Times article about a garment worker producing clothing for Forever 21 that was paid $6 per hour in 2017 to get a feel for what’s happening in our own backyard. Though the United States does have stricter working condition laws than many other countries that traditionally produce clothing (see: The Fair Labor Act, from the Department of Labor), it doesn’t mean that everything produced in the United States is produced ethically.

In response to this problem, some companies — like Levi Strauss — are looking for ways to reduce the number of production steps and reduce the demand for manual labor;

“Levi Strauss is introducing a digitizing technique that uses lasers to ethically create designs on its jeans in place of manual labor. Called Project FLX (which stands for Future-Led Execution), the technique will cut out harmful chemicals and reduce labor-intensive steps in producing jean finishes from between 18 to 24 steps to just three. Levi is also planning to scale this across the company’s denim supply chain”.

Even though Levi Strauss is taking major steps toward reducing the need for manual labor in the denim process, I truly do not see clothing being fully machine produced in the near future. And to me, that means that regardless of technological innovations, companies need to care about the garment workers that do work on their products.

I received a pair of DSTLD jeans in exchange for an Instagram post, but wanted to bring the brand into this blog topic’s conversation. DSTLD is a premium denim company based in Southern California that is tackling a number of environmental and ethical issues faced by the denim industry. Though they are by no means perfect in terms of sustainably producing, I admire DSTLD’s effort to slow down the pace of the fashion industry and think consciously about their production decisions. DSTLD produces 70% of their products in the United States (compared to seven percent of apparel-related products made in the United States in 2012) and “carefully screen their suppliers, laundries, and factories to ensure [their] product are fairly manufactured and 100% sweatshop free“. Though these ethical standards may seem surface level, Corey Epstein, co-founder of DSTLD, describes that many small brands simply do not have the bandwidth to audit their own factories;

“DSTLD has a set of minimum worker and environmental standards it shares with each of its contractors and its production team visits every factory that it contracts with. But the company currently lacks the capacity to audit factories. Instead, it contracts with plants that work with well-known brands that do have auditing capability.”

I feel as though it can be difficult as an ethical or sustainable shopper. I have such high expectations for brands that I often either get left with no options or simply cannot afford the brands that 100% fit my ethics. While I do not plan on lowering the bar in terms of expectations, I will begin to reflect on the challenges of smaller brands like DSTLD that are doing what they can to meet their own set of standards and still offer products to consumers at a reasonable price.

What do you think about the human cost of denim production? Should more companies turn to technology to solve these problems like Levi Strauss? Or are you satisfied with the efforts made by smaller companies like DSTLD that do what they can considering their scale?

DISCLOSURE: I RECEIVED THESE JEANS IN EXCHANGE FOR AN INSTAGRAM POST. I LIKED THEM SO MUCH THAT I DECIDED TO TALK ABOUT THEM IN THIS POST AS WELL. THIS POST CONTAINS AFFILIATE LINKS, WHICH HELP KEEP THIS SITE RUNNING. ALL OPINIONS ARE MY OWN.