The Australian designer sewing a brand on ethics and sustainability
Start unpicking the fashion industry and the cost to climate is clear. But Queensland’s Outland Denim is determined to break the pattern.
James Bartle is still haunted by her face: the little girl for sale on the streets of Thailand.
“I still can’t tell that story without tearing up,” he says. “She represents to me the 40 million or so slaves that exist in the world. I just want to fight for those people and I think that industry is the most powerful way of doing it.”
The little girl was the impetus that drove Bartle to set up Outland Denim as a way to get vulnerable women out of the trafficking cycle, to train and employ them for a better, more empowered life.
But it soon became an even bigger mission statement.
It was very early in his research that Bartle discovered the environmental challenges inherent in denim production, more than perhaps any other part of the fashion industry: the issues around cotton production itself, the chemicals used in the dyeing and treatment processes and the environmental impact they have, often affecting impoverished communities.
After nearly six years of self-funded research and development, the former freestyle motocross rider launched the label in 2016, with the ultimate goal of a positive impact on both people and planet.
It would be the beginning of a journey that continues to throw up problems requiring solving.
“Ignorance is an advantage,” he told me back in 2018. Today he insists that if he had known just how difficult it would be to pull off, “I definitely wouldn’t have started because it would have seemed impossible”.
Five years in, and Bartle and Outland Denim have been recognised globally for their achievements so far, winning the Thomson Reuters Stop Slavery Enterprise Award for small- to medium-sized businesses in 2020, and being one of the winners in the 2019 Common Objective Leadership Awards for helping solve environmental challenges.
Outland Denim also got a (then) royal seal of approval from the environmentally minded Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, who wore the brand when she toured Australia with Prince Harry six months after their wedding in 2018. The recognition that followed brought sell-outs and waiting lists across the world.
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“We really can harness lots of good things that are being done in different areas and bring it all together to create, hopefully, a product that leaves people and planet in a better position because we grew the fibres and produced the garment and sold the garment and wore it. We can’t say that about the environment yet, but we can say it about the people.”
It’s this desire to create a positive impact on the environment, rather than simply create and follow best practice, that now drives Bartle to solve what he considers the biggest issue facing the fashion industry: textile waste.
“How are we going to deal with it? If we can crack that, then we’ve got a product that does leave people and planet in a better position and that speaks to my deep belief that consumerism – conscious consumerism – is the only solution.
“I mean, Richard Branson is making a rocket to go into space and we can’t solve textile waste going into landfill? To me the only thing in it is that there’s a lack of resources being put into solving the problem.”
As with any fashion business that has to develop product, purchase materials, pay for labour and manufacturing before it sees any return, cashflow is an issue. Add to that raising funding for a brand that puts social and environmental outcomes ahead of immediate financial returns, and it takes a certain type of investor to get on board.
It’s this that initially led Bartle to crowdfunding: Outland Denim has so far raised $2.2 million in two rounds, attracting nearly 2000 people to invest in the bigger picture.
He looks at other examples from bigger players in the arena, such as San Francisco-based sustainable sneaker brand Allbirds, which recently raised US$300 million ($411 million) via an IPO.
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Start unpicking the fashion industry and the cost to climate is clear. But Queensland’s Outland Denim is determined to break the pattern.
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“Think about the change that could be created with that kind of money if your model is based on implementing these systems that we have now proven create freedom for people and better, more sustainable ways of manufacturing. They’re game-changing kinds of numbers,” Bartle says.
“But small businesses like us don’t have the ability to raise those kinds of numbers at this point in the game. So how do you attract the right money, because that’s just as important as getting the money to start with? Australia’s probably got a fair way to go in the impact-investing space, and that’s why I like crowdsource funding.”
Outland has managed to continue its growth trajectory even through the pandemic and two rounds of retail lockdowns, thanks largely to investment in its online platform: “This last month we had our biggest month of sales online that we’ve ever had”.
Now, it’s all about scale. Outland is already manufacturing for New Zealand’s Karen Walker and Byron Bay favourite Spell, with another label in the works. It’s similar to the crowdfunding approach in a way, tapping into other communities who can then spread the word.
As per Bartle’s early realisation, the more you learn about the fashion industry, the more you find problems that will need solutions.
Those issues include (at the moment) the marketing spin that is greenwashing, and educating consumers on, for example, why they should buy a pair of $200 jeans rather than some $20 ones.
“Our culture has changed because of the education we’ve had around fast fashion. For the past 10 years [we’ve been told] that for $200 we should be allowed to have 10 pairs of jeans, regardless of the consequences those cheaper jeans are having on people and planet.”
Bartle has seen first hand the impact that a living wage and an ethical, supportive working environment can have on the now 130 women working in the two Outland factories in Kampong Cham and Phnom Penh.
Ultimately, Bartle is a believer that the only way to solve the environmental issues the world is facing is to get people out of poverty. He cites the work of Kevin Bales, a professor at the University of Nottingham and an expert on modern slavery.
In his paper, From Forests to Factories: How modern slavery deepens the crisis of climate change, Bales concludes that if modern slaves were a country, they would be “the third largest emitters of carbon dioxide in the world”.
“A lot of that is due to deforestation and vulnerable people being forced into those kinds of activities,” says Bartle. “If you want to change this issue of climate change, you need to address people. It’s going to come through employment, through good job opportunities that are going to provide education or at least the means to be educated so that our population can rise above that day-to-day or hour-to-hour anxiety of ‘What am I going to feed my family?’ to ‘How can I be a part of something bigger?’.
“Because all of us ultimately have that same value. It’s just that some of us have the space to think about it and some of us haven’t been given that luxury yet.”
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Good jeans
Denim is often cited as one of the worst offenders when it comes to environmental impact but fortunately a slew of innovative approaches are overhauling the industry, writes Alice Birrell
Colour from clay
Outland Denim’s James Bartle is looking beyond the usual harmful chemicals for dyeing and treating denim by this month launching a range that takes its colour from clay. The denim, made with 100 per cent organic cotton in a soft shade of peach, undergoes a natural dyeing process.
Biodegradable in blue
The synthetics that give stretch denim its give also mean it doesn’t break down. Now, with innovations such as Italian textile company Candiani’s Coreva fabric — where fibres from natural rubber are used instead — more brands are making biodegradable denim. The latest is American label Frame, joining the compostable classics from Stella McCartney and AG.
Net positive
Sourcing materials from the wild is not usually par for the course in fashion but material science and clothing company Pangaia is proving it can be done. It works with Himalayan Wild Fibers to harvest nettles from mountain forests to produce a low-impact cotton blend.
Excellent vintage
Depop, the platform responsible for popularising resale, recently enlisted three creators and sellers from Australia and New Zealand for a partnership that reworks vintage Levi’s from the brand’s archives. Tanzyn Crawford, Luca Young and Sha’an D’Anthes demonstrate that the future of denim is in reworking.