Benim Denim

A ready-to-wear denim collection made from deadstock fabric / Source: Benim Denim

Celliant ViscoseCelluloseCirculoseCottonEuropeTextiles

5 MINUTE READ

Jennifer Hahn

WHAT WE SAY:

Switching to natural, recyclable, or compostable fibres isn't enough for the fashion industry to meet its climate targets — companies need to actually reduce how much they produce in the first place. As a fashion brand that's designed to be shut down, Benim Denim hopes to bring this message to the masses, committing to cease production once its limited supply of deadstock denim fabric runs out.

While adapting and scaling this "start up, shut down" business model across the industry would likely prove difficult, we think it demonstrates that working within planetary boundaries can actually create exciting creative opportunities for designers and businesses.

KEY FACTS:

Benim Denim is a Swedish ready-to-wear denim brand, founded in December 2022 and already on the brink of shutting down. That's because the brand was conceived for the sole purpose of giving new life to a 170-metre roll of deadstock denim fabric, and will close its doors for good once the waste material has been used up.
The brand's first and only collection includes only two pieces – a pair of oversized unisex denim jeans and a matching jacket etched with white contrast stitching. Retailing for SEK 1,950 (USD 188) and SEK 2,450 (USD 236) respectively, the individual pieces are already sold out, and are now only available to buy as a two-piece set for SEK 4,200 (USD 405).
The brand was founded by advertising creative Noah Bramme and Haisam Mohammed, founder of fragrance brand Unifrom. They were approached by textile recycling company Renewcell to see if the duo could find a new use for a roll of excess denim fabric, which the company had left over from a previous collaboration.
The denim is a blend of 60% virgin Cotton and 40% Viscose made with Circulose – regenerated Cellulose that Renewcell makes entirely from recycled textiles (denim, in this case). This recycling process is renewably powered, solvent free, and produces a fibre that the company claims can be recycled up to seven times without a loss in quality, unlike synthetic fibres.
Emphasising local production, Benim Denim's pieces were made entirely in central Sweden. Bramme and Mohammed designed the garments in Stockholm, only 265 kilometres from Renewcell's Kristinehamn factory, before they were sewn together by Malmö Industries in nearby Annelund.
Although Benim Denim looks set to shut its doors any day, Bramme and Mohammed argue that their business model could easily be applied to other waste streams. At that point, shutting down and starting a new brand every time would likely be impractical and mainly serve as a marketing gimmick.

Models wear matching jeans and jacket set / Source: Benim Denim

Branded detail and white contrast stitching / Source: Benim Denim

DIVE DEEPER:

At 113 million tonnes, global textile production reached an all-time high in 2021. As a result, a recent Textile Exchange report found the industry is now on track to shoot past its climate targets and jeopardise the crucial 1.5-degree threshold set out in the Paris Agreement. This drives home one critical point: switching to natural materials isn't enough. The industry needs to stop overproducing.
Bramme and Mohammed say their "start up, shut down" system offers the next generation of fashion designers a model for how they can start their own brand and produce clothes without necessarily contributing to the industry's outsized carbon footprint. "We believe this will be the zeitgeist of modern-day creatives going forward," Mohammed told Forbes. "Simply building brands out of lust and profit will lose its cool."
The brand's lookbook, shot by Swedish photographer Isak Berglund Mattsson-Mårn, helps to drive home this message – depicting a funeral service in which mourners wearing Benim Denim's Canadian tuxedos commiserate the brand's inevitable demise.
Two billion pairs of jeans are produced every year, each requiring vast amounts of resources in its production, including up to 10,000 litres of water just to grow the cotton. Not to mention the fact that cotton is also responsible for 22.5% of global insecticide use, threatening biodiversity. The collaboration between Benim Denim and Renewcell mitigates some of this impact by recycling and repurposing old denim, thereby reducing the stain on cotton as a natural resource.
Initiatives like Benim Denim also offer Renewcell a way to ensure its recycled fibre is reused in a closed-loop process rather than being immediately discarded. This is crucial to minimise waste as the company ramps up production in its new commercial-scale Sundsvall factory, increasing from 1,000 tonnes to 120,000 tonnes by the end of 2024.
Despite Renewcell's circular system, the deadstock material used to form Benim Denim's collection is still made predominantly from virgin cotton. And the brand doesn't provide a take-back scheme to ensure its Canadian tuxedoes can once again be recycled and turned into new clothes. Technically, both the cotton and the Circulose contained in the denim could be fed back into Renewcell's production process, but statistics suggest less than 1% of textile waste is currently recycled.

"Benim Denim subversively connects 'hype-marketing' tactics to the abstract, but very real physical constraints of climate and environment."

Nora Eslander – Head of Communications, Renewcell

Key Design Considerations:

Closing the loop

Brands and designers should go beyond using repurposed or recycled textiles and take custody over the end-of-life of their garments — a growing legislative priority as Extended Producer Responsibility regulations come into force. Take-back schemes with verified and scalable recycling and reuse models are imperative, helping not only to mitigate waste and landfilled clothing, but to reduce brand costs as the price of virgin materials continues to rise.

Beyond the gimmick

Realistically, you don't need to start up and shut down a new brand every time you tackle a new waste stream. But how can you incorporate this philosophy — choosing materials based on what is available rather than solely what is beautiful or functional — into your design process? And how can you tell similarly compelling stories about working in an increasingly resource-scarce world?