Sarah Ahmed, co-founder of New York-based label DL1961, discusses adopting an innovative, mindful approach towards manufacturing denim
From Meghan Markle and Emily Ratajkowski to Gigi Hadid and Jessica Alba, the New York-based premium denim label DL1961 has quite a cult following. Co-founded by Sarah Ahmed in 2008, the brand has revolutionised the idea of sustainable denim, thanks to its vertically integrated manufacturing process and other best practices in her family's Karachi-based factory.
The denim industry, worldwide, is notorious for being environmentally unfriendly, courtesy of the pesticides used in cotton farming, the chemical-based dyes and extensive water usage. In 2022, Statista reported the global denim jeans market to be worth US$ 64.5 billion and estimated it to go up to USD$95 billion by 2030. Denim continues to be a major player in the fashion world and shows no signs of slowing down, thus posing a glaring problem. An average pair of jeans uses 1,800 gallons of water, while DL1961 manufactures it in 10 gallons. Ahmed, the brand’s CEO, speaks to The Established on the innovation of eco-friendly fabrics in denim production and how her family successfully merged scale with sustainability.
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DL1961 was co-founded by Sarah Ahmed in 2008
All in the family
Born and raised in Karachi, 33-year-old Ahmed moved to New York when she was 18 to study design management and fine arts at the Parsons School of Design. "After I graduated, I worked at various places, including Elle, the World Policy Institute, and a gallery, while being involved in the family business the entire time," she says. Ahmed's family is one of Pakistan's most prolific sustainable denim manufacturers—a venture her parents started three decades ago. Her family business, Artistic Denim Mills, supplies high-performance, sustainable denim products to multiple leading brands globally that can be fully traced from fibre to finish.
In 2008, Ahmed’s mother felt it was time to launch their own brand, given their expertise in sustainable denim and the added advantage of vertically integrated operations. And so, DL1961 was born in New York with Ahmed involved in every step.
"Till today, we are the only vertically integrated denim brand in the world," explains Ahmed. Located in the Korangi Industrial Area in Karachi, the facility spreads over 65 acres and features state-of-the-art technologies for producing eco-friendly fabrics and garments. "Our factory is mostly automated–it looks like a pharmaceutical company. Everything here is tracked, including the usage of water, dyes, energy." At the fully solar-powered plant, recycling (98 per cent of the water is recycled), spinning, weaving and making the finished garment are all done in-house.
Scale and sustainability
Achieving both sustainability and scale can be tricky. But by owning every part of the manufacturing process, Ahmed has managed to do so. Being quick to adopt new technology despite it being an investment that has not been proven for a few years has been beneficial. She believes that businesses should be built with curiosity versus profitability. "There are a lot of sunk costs which most people don't want. But the anniversary of the Rana Plaza factory disaster in Dhaka in 2013 is a reminder that if you cut costs, this is what can happen," she says.
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The brand has revolutionised the idea of sustainable denim, thanks to its vertically integrated manufacturing process and other best practices in her family's Karachi-based factory
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Born and raised in Karachi, 33-year-old Ahmed moved to New York when she was 18 to study design management and fine arts at the Parsons School of Design
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Achieving both sustainability and scale can be tricky. But by owning every part of the manufacturing process, Ahmed has managed to do so
In 2017, Ahmed saw a gap in the market when it came to finding affordable, sustainable size-inclusive jeans, and she launched another brand, Warp + Weft. With the ethos of designing for all kinds of bodies in mind, the label's jeans retail for under US$ 100, cater to sizes from 00-24, and have sold 900,000 pairs since its launch. The second brand further proved that sustainability can indeed be affordable while selling large quantities.
With an existing large-scale setup, Ahmed is able to continuously innovate when it comes to developing green fabrics. For example, last year, the brand launched the world's first high-performance circular jeans made in partnership with Recover™. "Using a circular economy without compromising quality in a product that is so notoriously environmentally unfriendly is a huge step. Recover is a post-consumer waste cotton. We buy excess clothes from around the world before it goes into a landfill and process it into yarn," she says.
"USING A CIRCULAR ECONOMY WITHOUT COMPROMISING QUALITY IN A PRODUCT THAT IS SO NOTORIOUSLY ENVIRONMENTALLY UNFRIENDLY IS A HUGE STEP”
Sarah Ahmed
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"Till today, we are the only vertically integrated denim brand in the world," explains Ahmed
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Being quick to adopt new technology despite it being an investment that has not been proven for a few years has been beneficial
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Ahmed believes that businesses should be built with curiosity versus profitability
Ahmed adds that they were the first to use Recover in denim, and even used it to create the first-ever denim for skiwear which is also water resistant. For their collaboration with Perfect Moment, a luxury skiwear brand, she says that even the Perfect Moment signature houndstooth print was created sustainably using a laser machine that makes the pattern in 14 seconds or less. Another exciting innovation they worked on was denim fur when they teamed up with Kseniaschnaider, a Kyiv-based sustainable denim label. Using ozone and laser technologies to create the fuzzy effect, a pair of jeans from this collection uses less than 1.00 kWh of energy and very little water. "We cut used denim into little pieces with the laser machine, it then goes into a waterless washing machine and comes out like fur," she elaborates.
Transparency has always been key to Ahmed. In fact, she will soon be weaving nanotechnology into their jeans which can be read by a special machine where you can gauge the traceability of the fabric. "We have all the metrics to show how we produce– transparency and accountability are unparalleled." Additionally, for her and her family, giving back to the workers is an equal and important part of sustainability. Twelve thousand people work in their factory, and aside from paying fair wages, they provide a food bank and a blood bank. "Part of being visible and accountable is having our house in order–we just don't make a marketing story about it. If someone is trying to sell more clothes by saying, 'Well, we pay our workers fairly,' I think that's inappropriate–you should be doing it anyway."
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