Last year, Levi Strauss & Co. forged a partnership with Fashion for Good to support the development of sustainable and circular innovation in the apparel industry. Last month, one of the early fruits of that project was announced, a collaboration with Stony Creek Colors to pilot the use of plant-based, pre-reduced indigo at scale — part of our ongoing efforts to reduce the number of potentially harmful chemicals in the denim supply chain.
This is a new program for us with the Fashion for Good partnership, but it represents the continuation of both our exploration of the potential of plant-based dyes and an existing collaboration with Stony Creek Colors. The Levi’s® brand has worked with Stony Creek Colors’ plant-based dyes for several seasons of its Wellthread® collections, infusing their plant-based indigos into the line’s various pieces over the years.
“The original Levi’s jeans used plant-based indigo, so in some sense, we’re returning full circle to our roots,” said Una Murphy, director of design innovation with Levi’s®, last fall.
As we partner with Fashion for Good to continue these efforts, LS&Co. will bring its experience and technical know-how to the equation, while Stony Creek Colors will provide its IndiGold™ indigo dye to select denim mills to run performance trials with different denim dyeing systems. The goal is to unlock key learnings around shade application and other efficiencies. The project aims to have additional garments dyed with Stony Creek Colors’ IndiGold dye on the market by late 2022 and early 2023.
“Our previous work with Stony Creek has shown the great potential of plant-based dyes,” said Jeffrey Hogue, LS&Co. chief sustainability officer. “This is a great opportunity to expand that work and to more fully realize the potential of both this innovation and our partnership with Fashion for Good.”
