An Earth Day brunch at Bloomingdale’s Studio 59 restaurant was less of a branded bash and more of a quiet unraveling of denim’s looks when science, style and sustainability sync up. So much so, that Citizens of Humanity Group is betting that fashion’s future isn’t just plant-based. It’s bacteria-born.
The Los Angeles-based owner of premium denim brands and the luxury department store chain celebrated their “ongoing commitment to shaping a more sustainable future in fashion” alongside two partners in sustainability: fiber producer The Lycra Company and French biochemicals company Pili. The event also marked the launch of Agolde’s latest collection featuring bio-derived EcoMade Lycra Fiber made primarily from corn.
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“At the end of the day, there are a lot of people working on different innovations; it comes down to talent, leadership and transparency,” Amy Williams, CEO of Citizens of Humanity Group, said. “And when things are in the early stage, they don’t go perfectly, and you have to have an open conversation and the willingness to shift and learn.”
Citizens of Humanity Group began investigating Pili’s bio-dyes a few years before officially partnering with the company earlier this year. In January, Citizens of Humanity launched the first garments produced with Pili’s flagship product, Eco-Indigo, a bacteria-based alternative to petroleum-derived indigo dye.
The collaborators returned to Bloomingdale’s for an evening panel conversation around advancements in sustainable denim—and the resulting redefining of fashion’s responsible future.
“It takes everyone working together to bring something to market,” Williams said on how the Pili partnership began. “We want to do things better; I have children. One of the founders of the company has grandchildren. We can’t look at ourselves in the mirror and say we did enough, if, we didn’t really do everything. So, what drew us to them, frankly, was them.”
Pili was founded in 2015—eight years before the “carbon-conscious color company” secured $15.8 million in Series A funding in 2023. The funding was used to produce the first tons of Eco-Indigo and address the textile industry’s consumption habits, considering the sector devours 2 million tons of dyes (99 percent of which are fossil-based) annually.
Using a hybrid process that merges industrial fermentation with green chemistry, Pili creates high-performance pigments for high-pollution sectors like textiles, inks, polymers and coatings. It is made by fermenting sugar-fed, genetically modified bacteria—no fossil fuels, no toxic inputs, no harmful byproducts. The result? A scalable, low-carbon alternative to petroleum-based indigo with equivalent performance. Pili’s process can cut carbon dioxide emissions by up to 50 percent compared to traditional indigo dyeing processes.
“It’s a little bit like magic; you’re turning biomass or sugar into colors,” Jérémie Blache, CEO of Pili, said. “And it took us almost 10 years to develop this solution; so now, we’re very happy to be here first.”
Pili’s efforts, then, become interesting when considering the other dye options on the market.
Conventional dye production processes rely on non-renewable resources. Botanical dyes—those derived from plants, not petroleum—offer advantages like biodegradability and hypoallergenic. However, a handful of hiccups—limited color ranges, inconsistent results, higher cost—render them incomplete replacements for indigo’s conventional, synthetic counterparts.
Pili’s Eco-Indigo dye, however, is primarily composed of natural materials. More specifically, sugar, ethanol, oxygen and hydrogen. About 90 percent of that composition is derived from renewable resources.
“One element of hope for us is that, when you switch from non-renewable resources, you connect with people who are also trying circular resources and not just extracting things from the Earth,” Blache said. “You also connect with people also aware of the need for regenerative agriculture management or sustainable management of resources instead of just extraction. And in this change [comes] a great source of happiness.”
