To produce his own cotton, Thomas Huriez had two choices: “The first is to accelerate global warming in France. The second is to reuse the old clothes that we throw away and the cotton from this overconsumption of clothes. “He smiles:” Obviously we chose the second option. “
The president and co-founder of jeans brand 1083 is quite proud. In the Tissage de France factory located in Rupt-sur-Moselle in the heart of the Vosges and which he bought in 2018, the entrepreneur carried out a project launched in 2016: that of “industrializing the production of recycled yarn. in a mix from old jeans ”.
Marketing “in spring 2022”
Five years later, the first jeans labeled “Moncoton”, the name of the initiative, will be presented at the next Made in France MIFEXPO fair, in November in Issy-les-Moulineaux. “These will be the first jeans recycled from our customers’ old jeans, and we want to launch their marketing in spring 2022”, enthuses Thomas Huriez.
Developed “on artisanal volumes for the moment”, the process is broken down into three main stages, explains the buyer of Tissage de France: “First, we operate a selective sorting by choosing only jeans, because the thread is already blue and mostly cotton. “
The second phase consists of “a reverse mechanical process, which consists in disassembling the garment in an industrial and careful manner in order to release the cotton fiber without damaging it. “
Finally comes the famous stage of the recomposition of brand new jeans. “We put the thread back in spinning to recard it and pass it on”, adds Thomas Huriez. A process that requires some adaptation “because the fibers recovered are shorter”: “We sort to keep the longest. And sometimes two thin threads are woven together, which makes it stronger than a single thread of the same diameter. “
“Nothing patented”
For the founder of 1083, the “Moncoton” approach is part of a desire “to relocate all stages of production in France, from processing to the finished product”. “There is nothing patented in this approach, continues Thomas Huriez, since our objective is to offer solutions to develop the local economy and protect the environment”.
As for the local economy, the project seems to be bearing fruit: Tissage de France is preparing to welcome “20 additional employees between November and January 2022, with the creation of an additional jeans workshop”.
