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Inside Pangaia’s Debut Denim Range with Jonathan Cheung
We discover how sustainable powerhouse Pangaia tapped Jonathan Cheung for its debut denim vary and the unspun made- to-measure capsule assortment.
With a Hong Kong pop-up debut at Lane Crawford this month (which is later travelling to Shanghai, Beijing and Chengdu), Pangaia is making waves in Asia by means of its newest international outreach. The materials- science trend label that’s captured an entire technology with its moral loungewear has additionally launched its first foray into denim. Helming Pangaia Denim is British-raised, Bay Space-based Jonathan Cheung, who made his title reviving the Levi’s model as its international head of design and senior vice chairman earlier than leaving in 2020.
“I’ve recognized the Pangaia core staff for a while … and was very privileged to take up that problem,” explains the designer. “So now we’ve executed three drops of denim. The primary one was Himalayan Nettle – fairly basic, fairly acquainted shapes: a denim jacket, a pansexual straight-leg jean (not dissimilar to classic Levi’s 501s) and a high-waisted girls’s jean … However there are nerdy tweaked particulars to it, corresponding to veering to the left- as a substitute of the right-hand aspect – the weave of the denim is left (99 p.c of denim is correct woven) and the stash pocket is on the left right here.”
That totally new mix of Himalayan Nettle (nettle fibres being sturdy with a hole core) and natural Indian cotton was created with the Candiani Denim Mill in Italy, and leads to smooth but sturdy and breathable denim, making it cooling in summer time and warming in winter. The innovation additionally emphasises using regenerative vegetation, extra sustainable farming techniques and high-tech processes.
“The purpose is to advertise biodiversity and regenerative agricultural techniques, whereas creating resilience within the provide chain by utilising a better number of vegetation as fibre sources,” says Pangaia’s chief innovation officer, Dr Amanda Parkes. “We’re working in the direction of different improvements in our denim portfolio to convey a completely new materials library into industrial actuality.”
The second drop makes use of revolutionary cocktails of French hemp, Turkish natural cotton and Indian pure indigo. Most are available in a wealthy indigo hue with two washes, and there’s a shiny flamingo pink within the Hemp assortment. Pangaia’s material-science background, tech savviness and sustainable practices have created the proper avenue for Cheung’s designs as “an instrument of methods to specific these new supplies … And methods to make designing a little bit of the long run come to life.”
There was additionally the massive November launch of the Pangaia x Unspun made-to-order capsule-collection jeans in 4 genderless types. Through the use of 3D scanning know-how through a smartphone app, prospects will be capable of create denims particularly for his or her particular person form.
“It’s completely agnostic to gender, measurement and ethnicity, and can make a one-of-one pair of denims for you,” Cheung explains, including that that is only a first step in his three- yr plan. From the place we’re sitting, it’s a strong, punchy mixture of selling, know-how and the label’s signature “high-tech naturalism”.
We ask the denim guru if he sees this as the intense way forward for trend. “What we’re doing right here, while you take a look at it, you’ll be able to’t assist however suppose, yeah, that’s the long run,” he says. “You could have sustainability, utilizing issues like Himalayan nettle and pure indigo and all these elements, as step one … A few of these issues haven’t been executed earlier than in that individual cocktail. After which the customized denims utilizing a scanning app – once more, it’s one other new factor. We do inclusive sizing and pansexual types, so I believe all these issues are creating somewhat snapshot or a mini excellent storm of what the long run may very well be like.”
It’s maybe a daring declare, however the techniques Pangaia are espousing are radical in a number of methods. Their explorations have yielded improvements, corresponding to freshening peppermint oil-infused materials, recycled cashmere and the proprietary FlwrDwn know-how in puffa jackets/coats which are excellent for winter. So why not tackle the ever-present denim jean? “It’s probably the most democratic, inclusive, hard-wearing, long-lasting and culturally influential piece of clothes in all human historical past,” says Cheung. “No different piece of clothes has been worn for therefore lengthy, by so many individuals and I’d argue {that a} easy pair of denims is the good piece of clothes you’ll be able to personal, too.
“Our work has been like farm-to-table, beginning on the plant stage to make even higher, distinctive denim. I believe the estimates are, anyone time, about 50 p.c of the world’s inhabitants is carrying denim, which is sort of one thing … And the way do you outline affect? It’s the breadth and the magnitude that one thing has and its impact on a inhabitants.”
It’s all very becoming for a new-ish trend model that’s eschewed seasonal tendencies for wardrobe staples – all made in a greater means than has typically been executed earlier than. And although the pandemic clearly exacerbated current points within the trend system and manufacturing, the groundswell for higher social and environmental practices had reached the mainstream earlier than that.
For Cheung, whose household hails from Hong Kong, that is the most recent milestone in an already illustrious trend journey. Rising up as a first-generation immigrant youngster in the midst of England – in Margaret Thatcher’s birthplace of Grantham in Lincolnshire, to be exact – as a youngster, Cheung “had this type of dream that I didn’t know methods to specific — I form of wished to be a designer and it was arduous in these in these occasions within the ’80s, in small city. However I managed to not be a lawyer or all of the issues my dad and mom wished me to be, a health care provider, dentist, you understand how it’s.”
He made it to trend faculty, although, after which went on to spend 10 years in Milan, the place he labored beneath Franco Moschino and Giorgio Armani. A go to to the Levi’s archives then led to a job on the model, the place he rose to helm males’s and girls’s design throughout the denims large’s large comeback interval. “That was an infinite journey and privilege, and it’ll at all times have a long-lasting, a long-lasting mark on me. I used to be a Levi’s fan earlier than I labored there … I’ve at all times believed that the 501 is the best piece of clothes design in human historical past. I suppose I’m a product of my time, proper?” says Cheung, who talks about watching the likes of Sade, the Smiths and Debbie Harry do their factor in denim. “Denim is a part of my youth tradition. It simply has an incredible historical past with its closeness to standard tradition.”
We communicate solely a number of days after the loss of life of Virgil Abloh at simply 41. The person is near thoughts, as Cheung labored with Abloh after 2015 and knew him nicely. “Virgil was at all times carrying a trucker denim jacket, and he liked that. So all these issues made that journey very, very particular. And it’s an ideal privilege to form of proceed that journey with Pangaia …That is just the start; we’re actually rising our future denims proper now.” “Is it potential to make clothes that’s truly extra useful to the planet than if that clothes didn’t exist?” asks Cheung. “We at Pangaia are working in the direction of that.”
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