Jack & Jones' vision for in-conversion AM cotton
Danish denim brand Jack & Jones, owned by parent group Bestseller, is set to make around 200,000 pairs of jeans from certified in-conversion Pakistani cotton, which will be sold as part of its December 2022 collection.
The number of garments produced with the fibre is expected to increase from season to season, the brand’s creative buying manager, Mikkel Hochrein Albrektsen, stated.
Grown by farmers in the Kohlu district of Pakistan’s Balochistan province, this initial harvest, part of Bestseller supplier Artistic Milliners (AM)’s Milliner Organic project, was certified by the local Control Union office in Karachi.
Over 2,000 farmers have become involved in the direct-to-farm Milliner Organic initiative since its announcement in 2020. Having provided funding since the project’s early stages, Jack & Jones will now have access to a share of their first harvest, Bestseller said. In a bit to encourage more farmers to begin transitioning over to organic cotton, certified in-conversion cotton is listed as one of the group’s preferred materials.
Senior project specialist for Bestseller’s sustainability division, Danique Lodewijks, commented: “We can really see how important it is to focus on a direct-to-farm approach that ultimately aims to take cotton production to the next level. Not only when it comes to traceability and access to organic cotton, but [also in] making the livelihoods and well-being of farmers and their communities just as important.
"It is definitely not easy, but it is the way forward.”
One of the growers, Haji Bangul, told how the World Wildlife Fund and other facilitators had undertaken weekly visits to deliver support “from sowing to harvest”. He described how his yield had subsequently improved significantly compared to previous years and praised organic cotton’s eco-friendliness.
AM chief executive, Omer Ahmed, added that this season’s harvest is “the first of many to come” for the organic cotton scheme, which is due to migrate over to the Amsterdam-based Organic Cotton Accelerator’s Farmers Engagement and Development programme in the future.
Image: Bestseller.
