Jeansland Podcast

FRESH BLOOD is about renewal. Every industry either regenerates itself or slowly hardens. In this Jeansland series, Andrew steps back to listen to the next generation already working inside denim’s supply chain, upstream in fibers, sourcing platforms, laundries, and raw materials. In Part 4 of the series, Andrew sits down with Hayato Nishi, a second-generation industry professional whose path into...

Before the garments even leave the warehouse, the damage is already done. In Episode 62, Andrew sits down again with Umer Farooq Qureshi as the industry finds itself caught in the middle of a war it didn’t start. One year after their last conversation, the same pressures are back, only now they’re accelerating. The U.S. is actively engaged in a growing conflict with Iran, and the ripple effects ar...

Before there was a denim finishing industry, there was nothing. This week, Andrew sits down with Alice Tonello, Chief Brand & Strategy Officer at Tonello, a second-generation company that helped build that industry from scratch. In 1981, her uncle Osvaldo, a maintenance technician in a dye house, saw brands trying to figure out how to wash jeans and built the first machine to do it. No roadmap...

In this short, I go back to a moment in the early 90s, sitting across from a senior executive at Calvin Klein who asked me to cancel a fabric order we had already made. I couldn’t. He understood, the goods shipped, and the order was honored as agreed.   Years later, I faced similar situations. Orders were canceled, but there was still a sense of responsibility.  In each case, the customer stepped...

Some businesses are built through planning. Others are built through history, disruption, and decisions made under pressure. In Episode 59 , I speak with Rizwan Shafi of Crescent Bahuman , one of the defining names in Pakistan’s denim industry. His family’s story begins in the years after Partition, moves through cotton trading and textile expansion, and eventually leads to one of the first fully...

This is the third installment of our Fresh Blood series . I wanted to hear directly from two young professionals who grew up around textiles and are now working in fabric manufacturing. My guests are Lucille Ix , 22, based in New York and working across China and Vietnam, and Lucas Van de Woestyne , 27, based in Ghent, Belgium and working for a denim mill in China with a focus on Europe. Their fam...

This is Part Two of our FRESH BLOOD series, where I sit down with the next generation of denim leaders and ask what they see that we may not. FRESH BLOOD is about perspective. It is about how young professionals view sustainability, transparency, collaboration, and the future of this industry. In this episode, I speak with Beyza Baykan , founder of HMS Hand Made Stone. At 26, with a background in...

This is our second two-part special, and this time I step back and listen. Fresh Blood is about renewal. Every industry either regenerates itself or slowly hardens. In this episode, I sit down with Kaela Bonaquist from Lenzing and William Wood from Material Exchange to hear how the next generation sees denim, sourcing, fibers, and technology. They are already inside the system. Upstream in fibers....

Andrew sits down with Arne Koefoed , co-founder of WINK, to talk about how throwing parties slowly turned into a creative life. Arne never planned on designing experiences. There was no event school, no formal path. It started with squats, punk parties, and rave culture, and with the realization that bringing people together could be just as creative as making an object. That first party set the t...

Andrew reflects on a new report from the Transformers Foundation , Unlocking Equity in Innovation , and why so much meaningful innovation never makes it to market. The supply chain spends years and real money developing better fibers, cleaner chemistry, and smarter processes, only to be told to prove everything in 18 months or less. Andrew shares a personal story about a breakthrough alternative t...

This is Part 2 of our two-part Jeansland special, Water: Above and Below . In this episode, we continue the conversation with Rick Kellison and Brent Crossland , shifting from understanding the water problem to confronting what it will take to address it. The focus turns to the future of the TAWC (Texas Alliance for Water Conservation) project, why its work matters, and why keeping it funded is cr...

Today’s conversation is about something the denim industry rarely wants to look at directly, and that’s water. Not recycled water in factories. Not marketing claims. But the groundwater that actually makes cotton possible in the first place. This is the first episode of a two-part Jeansland special called Water: Above and Below . For this conversation, I’m joined by Rick Kellison and Brent Crossla...

A conversation with a friend about international politics turns into a simple question. If so much of the world is disturbed by the direction the United States has been taking, why doesn’t everyone just band together and try going it without the U.S.? That question leads Andrew to what he calls the Jeansland Nations, the countries where most of the world’s denim is produced. From there, the episod...

Andrew sits down with Piero Turk, a longtime friend from the old Italian denim days, when companies were small and you learned the business by doing everything yourself. For those who don’t know Piero, he’s a freelance designer who started in 1983 and has worked with major jean brands across Japan, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, New York, Italy, Turkey, Pakistan, and the UK. He’s collaborated with Andrew...

Happy New Year. 2026 is here and Andrew starts the year with a reset on where real power lives in the textile world. He talks about the four major cotton traders: Louis Dreyfus, Cargill, Olam, and Ecom. Governments and sovereign wealth funds now control much of what the world consumes. Abu Dhabi owns 45% of Louis Dreyfus. Singapore and Saudi Arabia control Olam. Trading what we need is as powerful...

This week, Andrew sits down with Shamin Vogel, editorial director and co-publisher of of WeAr Media Group—the people behind WeAr Global Magazine , one of the most widely read fashion trade publications in the world, and WeAr Denim , the biannual deep dive for the denim supply chain, backed by a monthly newsletter that actually gets read—to talk about where fashion really is right now, and why so m...

This episode starts in 1975, just after Portugal’s Carnation Revolution. A dictatorship ends. No civil war. No collapse. Just a quiet reset and a country that suddenly has to figure out how to function without fear, hierarchy, or shortcuts. Then we jump to now. Portugal is one of the strongest-performing economies in Europe, and almost nobody is talking about it. So the question is not “what happe...

Sophie Bramel is the technical editor at Inside Denim , and she watches the entire global denim ecosystem. Brands, mills, fibers, innovation, sustainability. All of it. In this conversation, Andrew and Sophie trace her path from music and fashion reporting to becoming one of the industry's most trusted observers. She talks about why denim mills feel like "cathedrals to blue," why tr...

In this week’s episode of Andrew’s Take, Andrew breaks down COP30 in Belém, Brazil and why so many people still don’t know what COP is or why the world gathers every year to discuss climate goals that rarely materialize. He walks through the entire arc, from COP’s 1992 origins to the Kyoto years, the Copenhagen disaster, the Paris moment of optimism, and the long loop of promises made and ignored....

“If the supply chain isn’t something I can be proud of, the garment isn’t worth making.”— Menno van Meurs, Founder of Tenue de Nîmes and Tenue. Menno van Meurs runs one of the most respected denim stores in Europe, Tenue de Nîmes in Amsterdam. He also makes his own jeans under the Tenue brand. He's not chasing trends. He's holding the line on craft, quality, and supply chain integrity in...

In April, the White House called it Liberation Day. The apparel industry called it panic. Andrew breaks down what happened when decades of predictable duty rates got wiped out overnight. Global jeans suppliers were hit with numbers no one saw coming. Vietnam at 46%, Cambodia at 49%, Bangladesh at 37%. Orders paused. Panic spread. The rollout felt like a list of naughty countries with penalties pos...

In 1975, Joel Carman opened Over the Rainbow with $2,000, a love of jeans, and no idea what he was doing. Fifty years later, Joel and his family run one of the longest-standing independent denim retailers in North America. Andrew sits down with Joel and Daniel to talk about what it takes to survive five decades in retail—from the early days when Joel was making $15 a day and driving a cab at night...

If a corporation were a person, what kind of person would it be? Andrew revisits the 2003 documentary The Corporation , which diagnosed the modern company as a psychopath. No empathy, no remorse, no conscience. Just profit with zero regard for human cost. He applies that lens to denim. Chasing cheaper wages. Blue-washing sustainability while underpaying the people who make the jeans. The 2020 sequ...

James McKinnon runs a 72-year-old family textile business in South Carolina. He's third generation. He sits on the Cotton Board, advises the USDA on cotton standards, and he'll tell you straight up that U.S. textiles are fighting some incredibly strong headwinds. But he also thinks it's a fight worth fighting. In this conversation, Andrew and James dig into what it takes to keep Ame...

Jeans have long been seen as the uniform of freedom. But if freedom is what we're selling, what's the truth behind the people making them? In this solo episode, Andrew looks at two global scorecards, one for freedom and one for happiness, across the 11 countries that produce most of the world's denim. The results aren't comfortable. China ranks third worst in the world for free...