Can hemp-based denim can match or even surpass cotton in both performance and appeal?
That’s the mission of “Beyond50 Denim: Combining Cottonized Hemp and Green Chemistry,” a new 12-month project led by Fashion for Good with support from Bestseller, C&A, PDS Limited, Reformation and Target.
The project positions hemp as a more “climate-resilient alternative” to conventional cotton. However, the bast fiber’s coarse characteristics have limited its use in denim.
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“Our goal at Reformation is to help drive the kind of innovative solutions that have the potential to transform fashion. Beyond50 Denim is a chance to really put promising solutions like hemp and green chemistry to the test: to learn, validate, and hopefully help open the door for a more sustainable future for denim,” said Carrie Freiman Parry, senior director of sustainability at Reformation.
Though brands like Patagonia, Naked & Famous and Mott & Bow offer hemp-blended jeans, the fiber is applied to a limited number of styles.
Additionally, the total hemp content in most jeans does not exceed 20 percent, due to challenges in achieving the desired hand feel and aesthetic criteria demanded by consumers. Fashion for Good said this “limitation can necessitate a challenging trade-off across performance, price, and environmental impact parameters.”
“Hemp’s limited adoption in denim production reveals how entrenched industry practices can systematically prevent transformative innovations from reaching their potential,” said Katrin Ley, Fashion for Good managing director.
Through Beyond50, the partners aim to increase hemp content in denim to 50 percent or more while maintaining performance parity with conventional cotton by applying two pioneering technologies to the process.
The project will combine SEFF’s Nano-Pulse technology, which transforms raw hemp into cotton-like fibers that are easier to spin and integrate into fabrics, with FIBRE52’s proprietary chemistry formulations that impart a softer hand feel to cellulosic fiber-based fabrics.
Bossa in Turkey and Nice Denim in Bangladesh will produce the hemp-blended fabrics.
“With Beyond50 Denim, we aim to demonstrate that overcoming these barriers requires more than isolated technological advances,” Ley said. “By strategically combining breakthrough fiber technology with green chemistry, the project shows how different innovations can work together to tackle long-standing challenges in the denim industry.”
Environmental challenges in denim production has been key focus area for Fashion for Good. In June, the Netherlands-based sustainable innovation platform published a list of solutions and alternatives to create more circular systems.
