Angel’s advocate
Armedangels became the latest European fashion brand to join the still-exclusive 100% recycled denim jeans club back in July.
This summer’s collections saw German eco-denim label Armedangels debut its very first pair of 100% recycled cotton jeans, sold under the brand’s low-impact line, Detox Denim. The range is produced from 100% certified organic cotton fibres, no “unnecessary chemicals” are used, no toxic heavy metals, chlorine or potassium permanganate, Armedangels’ impact and innovation director, Katya Kruk tells Inside Denim. Accordingly, 99.62% of the product line-up was made from natural fibres or recycled materials, without any virgin plastic-based content in the fabric, for a reduced carbon footprint. Its 100% recycled Mairaa Mom Fit denims are cut in fabrics made from 80% pre-consumer and 20% post-consumer cotton waste. Design lead, Sara Maier, said on launch that the jeans were Armedangels’ first to have been manufactured with recycled fibres exclusively.
Design mechanics
The brand sources its yarns from Calik Denim in Istanbul, which purchases its cotton from fellow Turkish recycler Gama. It generally prefers to work with mechanically recycled fibre, especially when it comes to natural materials such as cotton, linen or wool, and at times extends this to selected synthetics, too. The brand is keeping an eye on developments in chemical recycling, and has experimented with Lenzing’s Refibra technology, which results in Tencel-branded lyocell made from roughly one third pulped cotton scrap and two thirds wood pulp. Early phase pilot tests on other chemically recycled manmade cellulosic fibres are also underway. In the past, the company has incorporated its own shredded production off-cuts into pre-consumer waste yarns.
Close collaboration with the Calik team was essential to achieve a denim fabric made from fully recycled cotton, says Ms Kruk. To maintain quality, one of its key sustainability tenets, and never not a core concern, it chose a cotton blend having 80% pre-consumer recycled cotton, owing to inherent purity issues in post-consumer textile waste. The final fabric met in-house quality standards following “extensive testing”, despite requiring “completely different” treatment to the label’s other denims, due to the comparative shortness of the recycled fibre. Tunisian jeans maker Denim Authority was therefore asked to use an eco-friendlier softener in finishing, as well as chemicals that align better with Armedangels’ own strict chemical management standards, themselves inspired by Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) principles. An emerising finish was applied to enhance fabric softness and wearer comfort. Importantly, the finished articles are of the same quality as the company’s other jeanswear, “but might have a slightly stiffer hand feel after washing and occasional shading differences”.
Future-forward prepping
To take its designs to the next level, Armedangels will work to increase the percentage of recycled fibre content in denims, forging ahead with its goal to “set new paradigms in the industry” through not only achieving, but also exceeding prevailing sustainability standards, the business shares. All while continuing to create contemporary styles that balance innovation and aesthetics, it adds, and ramping up supply chain traceability. A pilot is already underway to help translate the brand’s carbon emissions data into more accessible and easily digestible information for shoppers, in partnership with fashion life-cycle assessment platform Carbonfact. This carbon calculation-turned- communications tool is currently being introduced across the label’s entire autumn-winter Detox Denim range, as a complement to the embedded Aware end-to-end physical tracer. Resulting insights are subsequently expected to help shape product development in other categories, beyond jeanswear.
Armedangels was notably ranked among the 54 companies (out of a total 424) that achieved level four or “leading” status for its strategy, expansion, and growth in use of preferred materials, harmony with global ecological goals and actioning circularity agendas in Textile Exchange’s most recent Material Change Insights report, based on 2021 figures. All very much in keeping with its wider eco-minded objectives and storytelling. Brand co-founder and chief executive, Martin Höfeler, perhaps captured its ethos best: “We need to radically rethink fashion. If we don’t, we’ll [just] go down perfectly styled.”
The brand’s Mairaa Mom Fit style is its first-ever pair of 100% recycled cotton jeans.
All photos: ARMEDANGELS
