Look beyond traditional jeans and make things more interesting by finding new ways to wear this beloved fabric.

If you ask anyone, male or female, what their favorite outfit is, there’s a good chance it includes denim. This fabric, originally designed for cowboys in the late 1800s has become a closet staple like no other. Besides jeans, there are lots of great items out there made from denim — like these bleach-splattered shoes, a sweet dress, bodega bag and pendant. Complement your blues with an updated version of the perfect trench coat, and a cool upcycled necklace.

Bleach Splatter Denim Women’s Cordones
If plain denim is just too boring for you, check out these Bleach Splatter Cordones, that work just as well with or without laces. For every pair sold, TOMS donates one to a child in need.
$69, Toms

Jesse Spanos Flare Jeans by Pray For Mother Nature
These super soft flare jeans by Pray For Mother Nature are the perfect medium-blue shade of denim. The Pray for Mother Nature collection is entirely designed and made in California by Chip Foster, formerly of Chip & Pepper (whose jeans were coveted for making your bum look amazing). A percentage of proceeds benefits Heal the Bay.
on sale for $59.95, Future standard

Pray For Mother Nature Cuts Like a Knife Ruffle Dress
If jeans, or pants, are simply not your thing, you can still be a Blue Jean Baby by trying out a denim dress. This scoop-neck one – also by Pray for Mother Nature, features tiers at the front, worn edges, and a pulled bottom hem.
on sale for $108, Shopbop

Study NY Pipe Necklace
Made in NYC by designer Tara St. James, this gorgeous necklace is crafted using reclaimed copper pipes and vintage silk. It’s the perfect way to add some interest to a simple jeans-and-T-shirt ensemble.
$180, Juno & Jove & Study NY

Remade USA Bodega Bag
Did you ever wonder what happened to all those tie-bleached jeans from the 80s? Well, some of them have been remade into cute bodega bags by designer Shannon South. Every bag is unique and completely made from upcycled denim.
$55, ReMade USA

Jen Abrams Vintage Denim Pendant
Jen Abrams creates simple, statement-making jewelry that is very much designed to go with your favorite pair of jeans. Maybe because it’s made using pre-loved denim. $96-$136, Jen Abrams Collection

Edun Trench Coat
The classic trench gets an update by Edun designer Sharon Wauchob. The frayed edges and powerfully simple details make this the perfect trench to wear with any kind of denim.
$398, Edun

Guess what? Jeans aren’t really green. The most sustainable pair you’ll slip on are the blue jeans that feel like cardboard boxes on your legs or the pair you find at the thrift shop; otherwise it’s a crapshoot as to how they get distressed like you want them to be.

Sustainable? To a degree, depending on what the company wants to tout as “eco,” with initiatives ranging from the use of natural reactants vs. toxic indigo baths to planting trees or giving back to countries that have suffered at the hands of the denim industry.

On that note, we turn our eyes to images like these released recently from Greenpeace on Ecotextile News. The site claims that “Two Chinese textile factory towns in Guangdong province, that together make millions of pairs of jeans and underwear, are now heavily polluted with chemicals released from textile production.”

Situated on a tributary of the Pearl River Delta, Xintang is a huge denim producer. Its jeans and apparel business began in the eighties, but thanks to our unquenchable thirst to look like rugged Americans, the last thirty years has enabled an entire economy to become completely dependent on the denim production chain in Xintang. According to Greenpeace, the town produces over 260 million pairs of jeans a year, equivalent to 60 percent of China’s total jeans production, and 40 percent of the jeans sold in the USA.

This is a satellite image of what Greenpeace caught flowing out of Xintang.

Denim pollution flows from Xintang into the Dong River, then on to the Pearl Delta

Apparently, in Xintang, the “jeans capital of the world” and Gurao, heavy metals in 17 of the 21 soil and water samples tested, indicated extensive heavy metal contamination throughout both cities, says EcoTextile News.

Greenpeace even cited that “In one sample, cadmium exceeded China’s national limits by 128 times.” 128 times?! Come on!

Will China get wise to stricter monitoring of discharged chemicals in their water and soil? Do they even care?

Greenpeace hopes so (as do we) and has called on not only the Chinese textile industry and government to shape up but for society as a whole to take a closer look at what fast fashion is doing to China’s environment and beyond, to you.

Over the past few years, there has been a growing number of sustainable denim brands on the market, including Levi’s Eco, REUSE, Good Society, Loomstate Organic and the now (sadly) defunct Del Forte Denim.

Traditionally speaking (if you can call it that after only three short years), what makes denim sustainable is the use of 100 percent organic cotton and plant based indigo dyes. Some brands use recycled denim and Del Forte had a great recycling program where they would take your old jeans and recycle them into new ones.

Today however, the eco denim scene is abuzz with Levi’s and H&M’s recent announcement of their plans to globally ban sandblasting by 2011. Together, they are encouraging other brands to follow suit, in the hope that it will become industry practice.

The sandblasting technique involves the “˜blasting’ of an abrasive material in a granular or powder form, at a very high speed and pressure, on specific areas of the garment surface to give it the desired distressed or used look. You know the look some of us achieve more naturally from wearing our favorite pair of jeans for years and years.

Their surprising decision came about from rising concerns over textile workers developing silicosis, a harsh lung disease caused from the airborne particles produced from sandblasting denim.

Turkey imposed a ban on the practice of sandblasting apparel in 2008, following a study conducted by news channel France24 that uncovered numerous denim workers in Istanbul who contracted this incurable disease.

As a result of the ban, some of the large denim companies in Turkey are now subcontracting to Pakistan, Bangladesh, Syria and Egypt, thus proving it may be difficult to monitor.

However, brands that are engaged with their supply chain, such as H&M and Levi’s, are in a better position to police the restriction closely.

But not everyone is convinced that this is a good idea. Monitoring the ban means that someone would have to visit the factories, to which some argue that a more effective solution is to impose a ban on factories that fail to implement good health and safety practices when sandblasting.

And another possible solution could be to provide workers with the appropriate protection, and use dust extraction equipment, making it less of a health risk.

Still, H&M and Levi’s decision to impose the ban is a step in the right direction, toward more responsible production that cares for its workers and their overall health. And because the ban could pose great operational risks for both companies, their actions should be applauded.

While I sit back and watch this play out, I think I’ll stick to buying vintage denim that already comes with that worn out, distressed look.

Image: Vivian Chen

Honestly, there are times when I too feel like taking a happy pill to get away from it all but the only way to be a part of it is to be educated. So don’t stop now.

These 15 books will take you down many interesting roads on your journey. Be open to it.

1. Eco Fashion

Eco Fashion by Sass Brown

“This book shows the range of companies making a difference in the area of sustainable design in fashion, exploding the myth that sustainable design is bad design, or at best basic design, by highlighting the range of companies producing desirable and well-designed apparel and accessories with a conscience. It not only demonstrates the range of products available around the globe, but explains the stories behind them and the communities they support, as well as showing how and where they make a difference.” – Laurence King Publishing

2. Future Fashion White Papers

Future Fashion White Papers by Earth Pledge

“A collection of 30 compelling essays by scientists, retailers, farmers, dyers, models and others in the industry, including Diane von Furstenberg, Julie Gilhart, and Shalom Harlow. FutureFashion White Papers take an in-depth look at the fashion industry and provides a thoughtful, wide-ranging analysis of how a transition to sustainability can be achieved. Diane von Furstenberg notes: ‘FutureFashion White Papers is an exploration that signifies movement towards a more sustainable fashion industry. It is an opportunity to think about and evaluate the fashion industry as it stands today’.” – Earth Pledge

3. The Eco-chick Guide to Life

The Eco-chick Guide To Life by Starre Vartan

“Every now and then, someone comes along who shows the rest of us how much we take for granted the freedoms of our daily lives. The eco-journalist, blogger and all-around green genie Starre Vartan is one such person. In The Eco Chick Guide to Life, her earth-first program for glamorous but environmentally conscious living, she mines new lodes of guilt, finding gems of awareness and providing detailed eco-wise shopping guides for the body, the closet, the home and the larder.” – The New York Times

4. DIY Fashion

DIY Fashion by Selena Francis-Bryden

“DIY Fashion is a cool, quirky, and creative guide to making and customizing your own clothes, bags, and accessories. It contains more than 40 thrifty, sustainable, and stylish projects, none of which require prior skill or a sewing machine. From customized hand-me-downs to elegant evening wear, the book is packed with ideas that the reader can adapt to their own taste.” – Amazon

5. Eco-Chic, The Fashion Paradox

Eco-Chic, The Fashion Paradox by Sandy Black

“Sandy Black has divided the book into four chapters: The Greening of the Fashion Industry, Re-Designing Fashion, Fibre to Fabric and Fabric to Fashion. In the first chapter she has profiled six of the most influential players in the UK ethical fashion industry: the inimitable Lynda Grose, the pioneering Fair Trade label People Tree, the mainstream advocates Marks and Spencer, the long-term campaigner Katharine Hamnett and the style leader Sarah Ratty of Ciel. By choosing these six profiles to feature at the beginning of the book Sandy Black has very quickly laid out the complex territory on which the battle for ethical fashion must be fought.” – Treehugger

6. Green Is The New Black

Green Is The New Black-How To Change The World With Style by Tamsin Blanchard

“Tamsin Blanchard is a journalist and writer. Since 2005, she has been the Telegraph Magazine’s style director. Before that she wrote about fashion and interiors for The Observer, and spent three years as The Independent‘s fashion editor. She is contributing fashion editor to the V&A Magazine, and a sometime contributing editor to 10 Magazine. She has also written for Vogue, Marie Claire, US Harper’s Bazaar, and The Daily Rubbish. In the late Nineties, she co-founded “˜it’ a luxury boxed magazine for fashion, art and design. She has taught fashion journalism at Central Saint Martins and University of Westminster and is currently an external assessor at London College of Fashion.”

With a foreword by Lily Cole, and lots of contributions from designers and eco experts, it is an entertaining, inspiring guide on how to be fashionably green. – www.tamsin blanchard.com

7. Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys

Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys by Kate Fletcher

“Kate Fletcher is a practitioner and academic who has been working in the field of sustainable fashion for the last 15 years: she has recently become Reader in Sustainable Fashion at London College of Fashion. Her consultancy within the fashion industry, coupled with her educational experience, makes her uniquely well qualified to write this much-needed text. Fletcher, who has helped to develop the concept of “˜slow fashion’, is at the center of research in this area and calls upon both established texts such as McDonough and Braungart’s Cradle to Cradle and recent research from a wide variety of sources, including her own, to support her writing. The quality of research is high.” – Oxford Art Journal

8. co Chic: The Savvy Shoppers Guide to Ethical Fashion

Eco Chic: The Savvy Shoppers Guide to Ethical Fashion by Matilda Lee

“The hottest trend on the catwalk is ethical clothing. Top fashion designers and spokes models including Katharine Hamnett, Stella McCartney and Bono’s wife Ali Hewson are all voicing the benefits of eco chic. But what is this new fad, and what difference can it make to the world? “Eco Chic” gives you the full story on this fashion phenomenon, from which fabrics are harmful to the environment, to how you can create your own eco-friendly fashions through recycling and savvy shopping. You will discover how to spot and avoid garments produced in sweatshops and why supermarket ‘fast clothes’ make both you and the planet sick. This book will allow you to look great but also feel good about your impact on other people and the planet as a whole.” – Amazon

9. Designers, Visionaries and Other Stories: A Collection of Sustainable Design Essays

Designers, Visionaries and Other Stories: A Collection of Sustainable Design Essays by Jonathan Chapman and Nick Gant

“Designers, Visionaries and Other Stories boldly presents alternative understandings of sustainable design, to curate a challenging, sometimes uncomfortable and always provocative, collection of essays by some of the world’s leading sustainable design thinkers. The result is an authoritative anthology that reinvigorates the culture of critique that in previous years has empowered design with the qualities of social, environmental and economic revolution.” – Earthscan

10. The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy

The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power and Politics of World Trade by Pietra Rivoli

-¦a readable and evenhanded treatment of the complexities of world trade”¦ As Rivoli repeatedly makes clear, there is absolutely nothing free about free trade except the slogan.” – San Francisco Chronicle

11. Threads of Labour

Threads of Labour: Garment Industry Supply Chains from the Worker’s Perspective by Angela Hale and Jane Wills

“This book gives valuable insights for decision-makers in international clothing brands. Read it and learn how garment workers worldwide are affected by the sub-contracted manufacturing that characterizes this industry.” – Dan Rees, Director of the Ethical Trading Initiative

12. Eco Colour: Botanical Dyes for Beautiful Textiles

Eco Colour: Botanical Dyes for Beautiful Textiles by India Flint

“The essence of plants bursts forth in magnificent hues and surprising palettes. Using dyes of the leaves, roots, and flowers to color your cloth and yarn can be an amazing journey into botanical alchemy. In Eco Colour, artistic dyer and colorist India Flint teaches you how to cull and use this gentle and ecologically sustainable alternative to synthetic dyes.

India explores the fascinating and infinitely variable world of plant color using a wide variety of techniques and recipes. From whole-dyed cloth and applied color to prints and layered dye techniques, India describes only ecologically sustainable plant-dye methods. She uses renewable resources and shows how to do the least possible harm to the dyer, the end user of the object, and the environment. Recipes include a number of entirely new processes developed by India, as well as guidelines for plant collection, directions for the distillation of nontoxic mordants, and methodologies for applying plant dyes.” – Amazon

13. Green Chic: Saving the Earth in Style

Green Chic: Saving the Earth in Style by Christie Matheson

“Matheson slyly steers us toward consumer goods and services that minimize our earth-stomping human footprint. She’s brave enough to say ‘buy less of everything,’ and even the politically fraught ‘buy nothing.’ Matheson’s genius is to make this seem not only doable, but fun.” – Elizabeth Royte, author of Garbage Land and Bottlemania

14. Sustainable Fashion: Why Now?

Sustainable Fashion: Why Now? A Conversation Exploring Issues, Practices and Possibilities by Janet Hethorn and Connie Ulasewicz

“Sustainable Fashion: Why Now? is a critical read for anyone with ties to the fashion industry: designers, marketers, product developers, retailers, teachers, students, and consumers that want to become involved with balancing the fashion desires of the individual with the need to be a steward of our environment.” – Fashion Practice

15. Fugitive Denim

Fugitive Denim: A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade by Rachel Louise Snyder

“Smart and ambitious, cosmopolite journalist Snyder maps the global garment industry, beginning in a New York loft where designers plot a line of ultra-pricey, socially responsible jeans that would ensure a fair wage for workers and not cause excessive environmental degradation. From there she visits cotton growers in Azerbaijan, denim specialists in Italy and factories in Cambodia and China. An excellent reporter, Snyder talks comfortably to both sophisticated designers and factory workers, conveying their very different motives as she paints a picture of an industry far more tangled than most consumers imagine. She notes that economic and employment shifts are felt globally, describing Italy mourning the loss of manufacturing to cheaper factories in Asia, where low-paying jobs represent unprecedented opportunity to many workers. If the prose occasionally verges on cuteness, it’s preferable to the jargon of quotas and NGOs ubiquitous in most discussions of global trade. Snyder’s investigation is an essential read for those curious about fashion or the globe-spanning business that produces their clothes.” – Publisher’s Weekly

Photo credit: Book pages by Horia Varlan on Flickr, licensed for commercial use under Creative Commons.

Keeping up on fashion’s next trend is essential for planning a lean and green wardrobe – one that maximizes each item’s wearability and longevity. At the two-day Denim by Premiere Vision trade fair held in Paris earlier this month, attending designers revealed denim’s newest direction. Moving away from distressed and destroyed detailing of endlessly scruffy past seasons, the latest styles glide towards an immaculate, tailored trouser look with studied seventies swagger – think Bianca Jagger smoldering the night away at Studio 54.

Other evolving trends emerged such as black denim, mirrored surfaces and imitating the explosion of pleated pant looks shown on recent runways – draped denim and drop crotch “jegging” styles utilizing flowy fabric mixes including the “carrot style” – named because of their shape, wide at the hips and tapered at the ankles.

Environmentally conscious consumers continue to demand the greening of their blue jeans impacting suppliers at the show, including Bossa, Kuroki, Kurabo and Denim Valley by Rojo, who exhibited fabrics made from recycled denim scraps. An eco-friendly “wine jean” range by South Korea’s Eco Yaa presented denim dipped in wine tannin, grape callus extract and sprout compounds. Apparently, the properties in wine are supposed to help prevent chafing (now you know).

Attending denim weavers and manufacturers attested to the ongoing dominance of the stretch skinny jean, revealing a backlog of fabric orders – meaning skinny jeans will remain in stores for at least the next three years. Agreeably, San Diego start-up Genomatica, announced their plans to release a green spandex by mid 2011. Genomatica have successfully converted renewable natural sugar to make BDO, an industrial plastic used to make stretch fibers like spandex historically manufactured with fossil fuels. So those organic denims will continue to cling for all for the right reasons.

Sustainability leader, Levi’s & Co report the final item in this triumvirate of denim news. Their ongoing efforts to lower Levi’s carbon footprint include an extensive Life Cycle Assessment report on a pair of 501′s, which revealed “almost 60 percent of the climate impact comes during the consumer phase. Nearly 80 percent of that is due to the energy intensive method we choose for drying.”

To encourage people to air dry rather than use the dryer, Levi’s has partnered with Myoo, a community that aim to solve environmental and social challenges by enticing participants to submit solutions to win prizes, to launch a competition to design a sustainable and effective clothing drying solution in areas where clothing lines are “banned for the sake of preserving values and prudishness.” Upload your projects before the deadline of July 31st, when the audience votes for the winner.

Image: Good Life Creative

Last month’s call from the Gap to bring in an old pair of jeans to receive 30 percent off a new pair was a great marketing campaign in more ways than one. With more than 1,000 Gap stores across the U.S. and Canada participating in the drop-off, I’m sure there are people who would like to know what their donations contributed to.

Thanks to customers bringing in their forlorn duds for two weeks, The Gap’s “Recycle Your Blues” drive received more than 270,000 pairs of donated jeans. According to a Gap press release, this matches the amount of denim collected in the four year history of the campaign led by Cotton Incorporated, the research and marketing company representing upland cotton.

The donated denim will now be converted into UltraTouchTM Natural Cotton Fiber housing insulation for 500 homes in under-served communities, as well as for special projects including the rebuilding effort in New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina.

“Through Recycle Your Blues, Gap and our customers demonstrated our strong commitment to doing what’s right for the environment and our communities,” says Ivy Ross, EVP of Marketing for Gap. “We are thrilled with the connection we made with our customers, and their incredible response to the recycled denim campaign.”

One can only hope the Gap continues to embark on projects like these but might want to employ the savvy entrepreneurial skills of a company like New York City based Denim Therapy where one can fix their favorite denim and re-wear.

The company swears they can fix any hole, hem, or broken denim regardless of damage severity, and will do so with unconditional love, carefully repairing all denim as if it was their own.

Kudos to Denim Therapy for providing a sustainable alternative to offset consumption.

It’s no secret the denim industry is extremely resource intensive.

We’ve learned just how intensive in recent years, thanks to research by eco journalists and, notably, an article in WWD by Ross Tucker in which Levi Strauss & Co. publicly “shared results of its life cycle assessment on what went into making one pair of its iconic Levi’s 501 style.”

Levi’s being to jeans what Kleenex is to tissue, people were listening.

According to Tucker, Levi’s found that making one pair of 501′s requires almost 920 gallons of water and 400 megajoules of energy while expelling 32 kilograms of carbon dioxide.

“Levi’s said this was equivalent to running a garden hose for 106 minutes, driving 78 miles and powering a computer for 556 hours,” writes Tucker.

Ouch.

If you consider denim one of your wardrobe staples (and who doesn’t?) best to think sustainably designed. To help, we’ve put together a denim guide with plenty of suggestions from the fabulous Jaime Palmucci of Denim Debutante.

Here are 17 good eco bets for denim:

Loomstate: Probably the most well-known of the “green” denim lines, Loomstate is known for their basic cuts and mid-weight organic cotton denim. Like Edun, Loomstate has temporarily put their denim line on hiatus based on fit issues, but there are still pairs online waiting to be bought.

REUSE: A new brand out of the U.S., REUSE creates their jeans with 80% recycled denim. Standard styles for women (men’s jeans are reportedly on the way) and a wallet-friendly retail price of $75-95.

James Jeans: Eco-friendly washes for a dry aged denim look. Note: while this line doesn’t use organic cotton, James Jeans creator Seun Lim uses organic compounds and sun bleaching to create the washes of her jeans.

Serfontaine: Eco-friendly washes and abrasions. Like James Jeans, Serfontaine doesn’t use organic cotton. For their washes, they substitute organic fruit enzymes for chemical dyes and irritants.

reco jeans: Like REUSE, reco uses Recycled Denim in their process. They go so far as to create seeded, plantable tags on their products to eliminate unneeded waste. (Factoid: Alanis Morrisette and Woody Harrelson created the line.)

Levi’s Eco: Organic cotton, recycled rivets and buttons. Styles made with 100% organic cotton include the Red Tab Vintage Straight Jean for men, the women’s Skinny Jean and Skinny Knee Knocker Short. Other elements of the Levi’s® Capital Eâ„¢ lines include the use of recycled buttons, rivets and zippers and natural indigo to dye some styles ensuring minimized impact on the environment. Price range starts at $69.

Nudie Jeans: The Swedish brand known for their Selvedge also has some 100% organic pairs. They follow organic production procedures and use products like potato starch and pre-reduced indigo in lieu of chemicals.

7 For All Mankind: The eponymous brand and forefather of premium denim, 7 For All Mankind does carry some 100% organic pairs.

Rogan Denim: Products are Fair-Trade approved and sweat-shop free. Rogan (the namesake line of Loomstate’s Rogan Gregory) has teamed with Bono to ensure their products are sweat-shop free and fair trade. They also promote minimal washing and no machine washing.

Good Society: The Good Society “is a movement,” according to the website. “A belief that in all things we must love, will and do good. A forward thinking community blending the fashion conscious with the socially conscious.” Being organic fairly traded denim that is fully sustainable surely helps. Another denim line taking a hiatus until current inventory moves. Go forth and buy!

Joe’s Organic: Though the brand only offers a small selection, it does have an organic denim line consisting of some of their best sellers like the Provocateur, Stardust, Muse and Socialite.

Edun: Launched in Spring 2005 by Ali Hewson and U2′s Bono, the company’s mission is to help develop countries in Africa as viable sources of production for fashion by “investing in the development of a community-based value chain, beginning with organic cotton.”  Their denim line is temporarily on hold because of fit issues – stay tuned.

Linda Loudermilk: Linda Loudermilk trademarked the term “Luxury Eco” and researches products that are sustainable by meeting with and learning from scientists, and seeking out companies that create fibers without pesticides or other toxic processes. Her denim line has been made from lyocell and bamboo blends.

Kuyichi: Made from a hemp and organic cotton tencel blend with natural dyes. You’ll love this company! A European label slowly moving into the U.S.

Howie’s: Featuring organic cotton washed with an “eco-ball” for extra softness, this European denim line has been around since 1995 and is about to have a Renaissance, I’m predicting, thanks to some better-known American denim lines taking a break.

J Brand: J Brand’s Green label is coming out soon, we’re told. Made with 100% organic cotton and vegetable dyes, J Brand is widely recognized as a go-to eco denim line. Let’s hope they shrink the fit to something less than what a 6’8″ woman would wear. Normal gals, J, normal gals.

Denim Design Lab: This company transforms salvaged denim woven on vintage shuttle looms to create a “Modern Vintage” look. Sold through “only the most premium denim based retailers globally.” Well, you can’t win ‘em all.

To get your daily denim fill, be sure to follow Jaime on Twitter @denimdebutante.

Image: littledan77

Lucky 3P writer Jen Boynton says of her recent dinner with Levi’s and a gaggle of writers: “The Levi Strauss folks came across as down to earth and honest. We talked about the sweatshop labor that plagued their press coverage in years past and how it started the company on the road to sustainability: first socially, with safe working conditions and fair labor practices, and now environmentally, rolling out EPA wastewater standards for all their international factories, life cycle analysis and energy reduction plans.”

Sounds to me like Levi’s is getting the environmental spirit.

By their partnering with Goodwill to promote “A Care Tag for Our Planet,” Levi’s new initiative aims to put billions of pounds of unwanted clothing to good use instead of into landfills. How? By using a new Levi’s tag and launching a campaign to encourage the owners of Levis to donate their jeans to Goodwill when they are done.

Goodwill can then resell to Levi’s fanatics as well as those who need affordable clothing, and provide job training programs to at-risk populations.

According to the Goodwill site, beginning in January 2010, the Levi’s® brand will be the first major retailer to include messaging on product care tags that encourages people to donate their unwanted clothing.

This is Goodwill’s first partnership designed to increase the lifecycle of clothing and textiles to address the approximately 23.8 billion pounds that end up in U.S. landfills each year.

A simple tag? Is that all it takes? We’ll see and we’ll hope.

WWD Market Editor Ross Tucker, whose expertise on denim, textiles and trade is considered biblical, has seen into the future.

What does it look like? Acid washed.

While some of you are contemplating jumping off a bridge rather than entertaining being seen in a pair, realize that as trends return, there’s always a new spin to them.

For instance, you’ll be wearing solid, dark colored shirts with the acid washed jeans (rather than neon) and a more subdued hair style than the big, crispy perm you once had.

But for expert advice and information on the trend, I turn this over to Ross.

All trends are cyclical, but in the case of acid-washed jeans, a trend of the ’80s, how are we going to give it a fresh spin?

While fashions do come around time and again, the technology and techniques used to create those looks is always moving forward. In the case of acid wash jeans it appears the wash houses achieving the looks have a much greater degree of control when it comes to removing color. From what I’ve seen it looks like they’re able to strip out less color, giving the jeans a sharper contrast between light areas and colored areas.

Should somebody get a whole bunch of acid-washed denim or just get a single pair to compliment their jean wardrobe?

I’m not really a fashion expert, but I don’t think women will be rushing out to replace all their dark jeans for acid-washed styles. Especially today, women like to have a number of different styles in their closet. They might have a boot cut for everyday wear, a trouser style when they want to dress up and a dark skinny pair for going out. Acid washes will probably be fashion pieces. Each brand will have one or two just so they can say they have it in their collection, but I’m guessing women may buy one or two pairs at most.

Women who research the process of getting a pair of acid-washed jeans might be a little horrified by the process. What’s a greener way to wear the trend? (Get old ones at consignment boutiques? eBay? Bash the crap out of them with rocks?)

I’m afraid I don’t know of a greener way to get the look. I mean, acid, it’s right there in the name of the trend. The link below suggests
hydrogen peroxide may work, but I don’t have any firsthand experience with how well, or if, it works:

http://greencottonblog.com/tag/bleach/

Some brands use ozone to achieve a faded look, so people could seek out brands that use this process rather than acid washing. That takes some research.

Acid-washing adds another step in a denim process that is already very water, chemical and energy-intensive. It’s an incremental increase in that process, so it’s not the worst thing in the world. And I do have to say that chemical companies that supply the industry are introducing more lower-impact products.

Many denim lovers do like to do their own styling and they’ll encourage you to use almost anything to get the look you want. Rocks, sandpaper, bleach, peroxide, tea to make stains, paint, grease and on and on. You could make a project out of doing your own styling using natural or lower-impact chemicals and methods.

Go buy a pair of raw or dark jeans and soak them in some warm water. If you wring them out a couple of times you’ll take out some of the color, which will definitely dye your hands as well. After they dry, hit ‘em with the sandpaper and try the peroxide in spots or any other lower-impact bleaching agent you may have. It’s definitely a trial and error approach and you may want to start with a cheap pair before you dive in on your favorite jeans. Achieving a full acid-wash effect maybe pretty difficult this way, but it may be possible.

Even though we’re passing through a recession, denim sales are up. What makes denim so resilient in this economy?

People really see a lot of value in denim and it makes a lot of sense. Jeans have probably one of the longest shelf-lives of any apparel item. They last for years and over time, they sort of meld themselves to the person wearing them. Those creases, faded areas, a small hole on your back pocket – those things are like a fingerprint reflecting a little bit about you; it wouldn’t look the same on anyone else.

When the economy starting going south people looked for places to cut back. They determined they didn’t need those shoes or that perfume, but they had no problem justifying buying jeans even if they cost more than $200. And many lower-priced brands are able to achieve a great look these days, so people shopping at all price levels have a lot of options. There are a lot more choices than just Lee, Wrangler and Levi’s these days. It’s also a lot more acceptable to wear jeans in a range of social settings and situations these days.

It is interesting to me that jean sales have risen along with sales of so-called fast fashion from places like H&M, Forever 21 and Topshop. Those items don’t last as long and aren’t meant to, but people still buy. Obviously people expect their jeans to last a long time, so why can’t we convince them that a t-shirt should hold up at least a little better than it does?

What are some other potential denim trends you’ve seen at shows? Anything fresh and new?

Overall, jeans are going back to being more faded and washed out. You’ll hear it described as the vintage look. It will be the dominating trend this fall and the major brands and retailers will be betting big on denim. They’ve already started.

Well, you see, I was 19, traveling across America and…come on, you just want to know abut why they united to make jeans, don’t you? You don’t want to know anything about me being a movie extra in New Mexico with Woody or singing with Natalie Merchant in a hotel room as she secretly feared Alannis’ success do you?

All right then, you denim fashionista, the two, by some strange act of god have come together to create a completely recycled line of denim called reco and they want you to name the price. In fact, they’ve actually devised an auction-style promotion to help you determine the cost. Your suggestion will affect how they price their premium denim line in the future.

How cool.

What you have to love is that you, the consumer are being asked to put worth to something which is refreshingly provocative (kudos to the duo). If only we were always forced to act in this way when it came to buying anything we consider essential.

Click around their site and you’ll see how they’re making the line, the process of making jeans and after all the reading you might just change your greedy little mind that the pair should be worth more than you wanted them to be.

I personally think they’ve put a lot of thought into the line from the back pockets to the various cuts. Okay reco, my bid is for $125. It would’ve been higher if you’d found a better way to do your dyeing. But as you say on the site, “every little bit helps.”