In 2019, Waverley Mills met with the CEO of Nudie Jeans Australia, Bryce Alton at the Legacy Summit in Sydney. The summit is a sustainabilty forum where producers, industry partners, and consumers can all meet under one roof. 

Waverley Mills had the technology to be able to shred post-consumer Nudie Jeans, blend it with locally produced recycled wool to create a new product. 

What was left to do but try?

 "This was a huge opportunity for us to use jeans that have been handed in from consumers that couldn’t be repaired or adapted to the Nudie Jeans Re-use program. Also, a perfect occasion to see if we could collaborate with a local manufacture to create a closed textile loop in Australia." — Bryce Alton 

The result was the first release of the Nudie Jeans x Waverley Mills Ture Throw in Recycled Denim. The design sold out quickly, proving there was a real appetite for turning post-consumer denim into something people wanted to own.

The throws are made of post-consumer jeans and recycled Australian wool. The pale indigo colour of the first throw was an organic result from the jeans..

There are 2 extra steps added to our usual recycled wool manufacturing process to incorporate the denim:

Step 1: Dis-assembling the jeans prior to ragging. Removing the zippers, studs etc. 

Step 2: Ragging the jeans to create fibre to mix with our other recycled wool.

Pictured:  Post-consumer Nudie Jeans entering the Waverley Mills ragging machine in Launceston Tasmania

The Nudie x Waverley Mills collaboration is now onto its third design, Nudie x Waverley Mills Recycled Denim Throw 3, with each release evolving the design and process further. Read the full story of this evolution here.