Our jeans aren't organic. We use organic cotton for a number of our clothes, so that might be a surprising place to start a conversation about sustainable clothing, but it's a detail we think you should know. When we were working on our jeans, we couldn't find a U.S.-made organic denim that suited what we wanted to make. We chose a substantial cotton denim milled in Georgia, and we have the jeans sewn here in San Francisco.
We're happy to tell that story, including the part that didn't line up perfectly with our first idea. Clothes involve a lot of choices, and we'd rather make ours understandable than expect one word on a label to explain everything.
What the fabric label can tell you
Take two things you might wear together: our Everyday Strawberry Tee and Lemon Pocket Play Jeans. The tee starts with undyed organic cotton grown in the United States, and we screen print the strawberry design in our San Francisco studio. The jeans use 100% U.S.-grown cotton denim from Mt. Vernon Mills in Georgia. It's a 13.75-ounce denim, with a soft-washed finish and some weight to it.
Those are different materials with different qualities. The organic description belongs to the tee; it doesn't carry over to the jeans just because we make both. And undyed describes the tee's base fabric, which still has a colorful print on it. Small distinctions, but they help you understand what you're buying.
A closer look at words like recycled and bamboo
The next thing we'd look for is what a claim actually covers. If something is called recycled, is that the garment, part of the fabric, or the box it comes in? If there's a certification, what does it certify? The FTC's guide to environmental marketing claims is useful when the wording leaves you guessing.
Bamboo fabric can be confusing in a similar way. The FTC explains that soft textiles sold as bamboo are often rayon or viscose made from bamboo. The finished textile has been processed; qualities of the growing plant don't automatically describe the fabric. We'd read the fiber label before making a choice based on the bamboo name.
Where an older fabric fits into a new pair of jeans
We like hunting for fabrics around the Bay Area, in thrift stores and antique shops, and imagining where a little piece of something could go. Our Vintage Fabric Pocket Play Jeans give those finds a place to land. The pockets use vintage fabric; the denim body is new.
That matters if you're specifically looking for secondhand clothes. These are newly made jeans with an older fabric detail, and we want the description to leave you with that picture. Our upcycling guide gets into the other ways we work with existing clothes and materials.
Making clothes locally matters to us, too. You can read more about those decisions in our manufacturing story. We don't take a San Francisco sewing address as proof of a smaller environmental footprint on its own. Growing and processing the fibers, transport, care and what happens to a garment later all belong in that conversation.
Then there's the question of wearing it
Before buying a piece, we'd spend a moment with the clothes already in the drawer. What would this go with? Does the shape suit the person wearing it? Compare the measurements with a favorite pair or tee, and look at the care instructions, especially if a particular washing routine is going to be difficult at home.
Sometimes that leads to a new piece you can see being worn often. Sometimes it means fixing a pocket, trying a different combination, or passing along something that no longer fits. We make clothes because we care about them, and part of that is being interested in what happens after they leave our shop.
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