… “Today’s denim has very little in common with what people were making a couple of hundred years ago,” said Stefano Aldighieri, a California-based denim consultant who has worked with Levi’s and other denim brands. That rough-and-tumble, stiff cotton denim favored by railroad workers is long gone.
Today, a typical pair of jeans contains polyester thread, poly-cotton interior pockets, polyester zipper tape, plastic interfacing inside the waistband, polyester tags and labels, and, depending on the design, polyester and elastane added for stretch. Almost all of these synthetics are derived from petroleum.
“Even when things are marked cotton, and we think we’re shopping for cotton products, we are still participating in a petrochemical economy,” said Paul Dillinger, Levi’s vice president of Global Product Innovation. He said that in a small pair of women’s jeans marked as 100% cotton, up to 10% comprises other materials. That’s because the Federal Trade Commission only requires manufacturers to list materials that comprise 5% or more of the product’s weight. …