Denim returns to its roots in southern French town of Nimes

Jeans are one of the most un-environmentally friendly garments around, but a company in Nimes, the birthplace of denim, has drawn on the town's ancient savoir-faire to develop a more sustainable manufacturing process. 

With more than 3 billion pairs sold each year, jeans are one of the  most worn items of clothing worldwide . They originated in the US in 1873, thanks to a certain Levi Strauss. But the hard-wearing indigo blue fabric they're made from has its roots here in France, in the medieval town of Nimes.

When Nimes became a hub for the textile industry in the mid-17th century, it wove a hard-wearing twill called “serge de Nimes” out of locally produced wool and silk. As the fabric was traded abroad, notably to England, it's likely “de Nimes” (from Nimes) became “denim”.

Nimes' industry couldn't compete with cheap imports from Asia and more or less fizzled out in the mid-50s.

But now its looms are turning again, thanks to French entrepreneur Guillaume Sagot.

“It was an old dream to bring denim back to Nimes,” he says in his Ateliers de Nimes workshop as he sets the two big looms he's recently purchased into motion.

Sagot quit his job in digital communications in Paris in 2014 in search of something “with meaning”. He returned to his hometown with the aim of working with the fabric that had made Nimes famous, using the greener methods of his ancestors.

In the early days he imported the fabric from Italy and cut and sewed the jeans in his workshop, while the finishing was done elsewhere in France.

When the Covid pandemic brought business to a halt, giving him time to think, he realised what mattered most was making the fabric here in Nimes, like in the past.

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Finding a new, computer-driven loom was easy, if expensive, but getting his hands on an traditional shuttle loom was more complicated.

“As I wasn't in the weaving business no one wanted to sell me one,” he says. Eventually, he managed to convince the owner of a 1991 Saurer Diederichs model that the machine should stay in France. 

The bigger challenge was learning to use it. There were no schools to train in, and very few people with the know-how. But he got lucky and two retired weavers agreed to show him the ropes.

“I'm still learning,” he says, leaning into the older loom to check how the criss-crossing of warp and weft threads is coming along.

He says it takes about 10 minutes to weave the 1m30 of denim needed to make a pair of jeans.

Greener, cleaner, longer-lasting jeans

Sagot imports the 100 percent-combed-cotton thread from Turkey. Grown and spun around the southeast town of Adana, it's a special double-twisted thread, similar to the one used to make the serge de Nimes twill back in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Much stronger than the thread used in industrially made jeans, it doesn't have to be "sized" with chemicals and polymers to withstand the weaving process.

Regular thread needs not only to be sized, but then de-sized with solvents and enormous amounts of water.

The UN has estimated as much as 7,500 litres of water are used for each pair of industrially made jeans. Sagot says his pairs use “around 75 percent less”.

Sagot's workshop produces enough fabric to make 4,000 pairs of jeans each year. They're designed and manufactured in a family-run workshop in Portugal.

Of course, there's a price tag for the special thread and more labour-intensive processes. The jeans average €180 a pair.

But they're unique – each one has a serial number, and above all they're made to last, just as the original denim from Nimes has.

The Levi Strauss connection

At the town's Musée du Vieux Nimes, you can see the earliest garments made of serge de Nimes.

Fabric samples show the distinct criss-cross weaving alongside a range of workers' garments, big bags or boat sails.

A Carmagnole jacket from the late 18th century is in mint condition, despite the fact it could well have been worn by 1789 revolutionaries.

Next to it is a 1957 Levi's jacket. There are striking similarities.

“You see the buttons are similarly placed, it's a similar length,” says curator Lisa Laborie-Barrière.

It's tempting to think Levi Strauss was inspired by the French model.

“The link is quite difficult to know, mainly because the archives of Levi Strauss were destroyed at the beginning of the 20th century,” she says.

“But it could be that some denim came directly to the US, or the denim was exported there mainly by the Protestants in England or Germany.”

Those were the Huguenots, driven out of France by Louis XIV following the 1598 Edict of Nantes.

“They took with them all their knowledge to make other kinds of serge de Nimes,” the curator notes.

 

Limits to 'made in France'

President Emmanuel Macron is pushing hard for France to reindustrialise, but it's unlikely that will happen in the textile industry. “It would be far too expensive to manufacture jeans here from start to finish. Maybe it can work for luxury goods,” Sagot says.

• Podcast: Why 'Made in France' is becoming trendy

But he's not obsessed with the “Made in France” concept. He opted to have the jeans designed and made in Portugal because it makes for a better product.

“We tried making them in France but we had a lot of problems with the finishing. It's hard to say this, but we work in Portugal because the quality is better and they have good know-how.”

Sagot hopes to revive Nimes' old savoir-faire in other ways: namely, making denim from the locally sourced wool and silk used to weave the original serge de Nimes.

He also plans to experiment with recycling the waste cotton fibres that settle on surfaces when the looms are in motion.

“In French we call it bourre de coton and bourre de soie. They used it in the old days to make yarn.”

He scoops some up and rolls it between his fingers to make a kind of thread.

“You would have to blend it with other fibres, but you could use it.

“Recycling isn't a new idea, it's a very old one.”

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Listen to a version of this story in the Spotlight on France podcast, episode 97. Link here.