At every stage, from harvesting the cotton, to indigo dyeing and weaving, down to the sewing, men and women have worked hard to create our products. This is why we value the product so highly and will always believe in the worth of repairing and reusing. We recommend our customers to wear their dry Nudie jeans for at least 6 months before the first wash. The outcome depends on who you are and how you live your life in your jeans. But regardless of the lifestyle, your jeans become a log of the time gone by, and they will end up as one of a kind, shaped by you.
But if it’s those strong contrasts you’re after, keep in mind that an early wash will reduce the chances to get that distinct look. Airing them instead of washing will also save water. And this is the first part of the smart but still so simple eco cycle. Following the eco cycle makes your Nudie Jeans more beautiful while also saving resources.
Why does Indigo fade?
During the dyeing process, the natural cotton warp yarn is dipped into a number of indigo dye baths where it gradually turns to a deep blue color. As indigo dye can’t be completely fixated onto and penetrate the cotton fibers – the color will bleed and fade as long as the denim is worn.
If you scrape an indigo-colored cotton warp thread with the edge of a knife, the blue dye will bleed and reveal the white core layer. The same principle applies when wearing a pair of dry jeans.
Every pair of Nudie Jeans comes with a promise of free repairs. No matter when or where you got them. Our jeans are meant to be worn a lot. We use only high-quality fabrics, and the sewing is top class.
During 2022, we repaired 65,386 pairs. That’s quite a stack, considering they are stacked double-folded.
As we provide the jeans, we also take care of them when they are torn. Just wash your jeans and hand them into your closest Nudie Jeans Repair Spot. Once they are patched and sewn, you have an updated version of your favorite jeans.
If you feel the moon is closer than any of our Repair Shops, you can look for our Repair Partners. They are fully equipped to repair and handle your jeans just as if you had left them at one of our shops. Of course, they do it for free as well. We also got repairs on wheels. Catch the Mobile Repair Station when it hits your town.
Repair shops.
Our shops are called Repair Shops because, for us, it is just as important to care for and repair the jeans we once sold, as it is to sell new ones. Of course, you can buy our products in our Repair Shops, but we have also chosen to give the Repair Stations a key position in the stores.
The idea behind the Nudie Jeans Repair Shops is for them to serve as hubs where our jeans are repaired, resold as second-hand products, or handed into the Nudie Jeans Reuse program. Last year we collected 20,772 pairs of jeans in our shops.
Repair partners.
One of the biggest challenges of circularity is scalability. In 2018, we set a goal to open 50 new Repair Spots globally by 2030, and one of the steps toward reaching that goal is partnering with selected wholesale accounts and establishing Nudie Jeans Repair Stations in their local shops.
This enables a wider reach for our repair services and allows us to spread the eco-cycle message, while also creating opportunities to further impact consumers’ adoption of more circular behaviors. The Repair Partners are equipped with the same sewing machines and sets of tools as our own Repair Shops in order to easily carry out the same services that we provide. Each partner is carefully selected to ensure that our promise of free repairs for life is delivered responsibly, with high quality, and in more and new locations.
Repair kit.
If there’s no Repair Shop or Repair Partner around the corner where you live no planned visits from the Mobile Repair Station, you can order a free of charge DIY repair kit.
To prolong the life of a garment is even more sustainable than recycling. It can be done by simply using the garment for a long time, reselling the garment, reusing the fabric to create something new, making patches for repairing or cutting it into materials for new products.
At Nudie Jeans we do all of this, to reduce waste. We offer our customers 20% off the next pair when handing in an old pair of Nudie jeans. The jeans that we sell again in our Reuse range are washed and then repaired if needed, and ready to become a new customer’s favorite pair. Prolonging the life of the denim by reselling, is also a great way to showcase the real value of the garment. In 2022 we sold 3984 pairs of Reuse jeans.
When we have used and reused denim for a long time, we need to explore recycling, as the last step of closing our loop. Recycling reduces waste, saves energy, and reduces the consumption of virgin raw materials. Cotton fibers last much longer than we normally tend to use or wear our clothes. A pair of jeans can be recycled in various ways, and there are challenges in both the mechanical and chemical recycling processes. We are constantly looking for new ways to extend the life of our cotton fibers.
In the exploration of recycling our own products, we endeavor to keep organic cotton separate from conventional cotton in the recycling process. This way, it can be used again as recycled organic cotton, which we think is the most preferred alternative. By exploring ways of recycling our own products we know that the input of recycled cotton is organic, along with the input of virgin cotton. The new product would, therefore, be both organic and recycled.
To be able to scale up this circular idea to more than just one or a few projects, we need a steady inflow of our own denim to be used as raw material. This means that the more Nudie Jeans we can collect in our Repair Shops the better, both for reuse purposes and for recycling.
In 2022, we collected 20,772 pairs of Nudie jeans through our Reuse program and we hope that more and more of our users will hand in their jeans to us when they no longer want them. This way we can continue to prolong the life of the cotton fiber, regardless of whether it is as a pair of Reuse jeans, patches for the repairs, fabric for new denim accessories, or as fiber input to a recycled fabric blends for new jeans.
