Ever growing denim industry

Jehangir Hussain

Jehangir Hussain

Denim is a sturdy cotton warp-faced textile in which the weft passes under two or more warp threads.

It’s a type of woven twill fabric, usually made from cotton. It consists of two yarns that are woven together. The yarn that runs across known as the weft is threaded over and under the yarn that runs downwards, which is called the warp.

This twill weaving produces a diagonal ribbing that distinguishes it from cotton duck.

A denim predecessor known as dungaree has been produced in India for hundreds of years, denim as it is recognized today as first produced in Nimes, France.

Denim is available in a range of colours, but the most common denim is indigo denim in which the warp thread is dyed while the weft thread is left white. As a result of the warp-faced twill weaving, one side of the textile is dominated by the blue warp threads and the other side is dominated by the white weft threads.

Jeans fabricated from this cloth are thus predominantly white on the inside.

Denim is used to create a wide variety of garments, accessories, and furniture.

'Denim' originated as a contraction of the French phrase serge  de Nimes ('serge from Nimes).

Denim has been used in the United States since the mid-19th century. Denim initially gained popularity in 1873 when Jacob W Davis, a tailor from Nevada, manufactured the first pair of rivet-reinforced denim pants.

As the popularity of denim jeans outstripped the capacity of Davis's small shop, so he moved his production to the facilities of dry goods wholesaler Levi Stauss & Co., which had been supplying Davis with bolts of denim fabric.

Throughout the 20th century denim was used for cheap durable uniforms like those issued to staff of the French national railways.

In the postwar years, British Royal Air Force overalls for dirty work were named "denims".

These were a one-piece garment, with long legs and sleeves, buttoned from throat to crotch, in an olive drab denim fabric.

Some denim yarn may use an elastic component such as spandex for up to 3 per cent of the content to allow the final woven product to stretch. Even such a small amount of spandex enables a stretching capacity of about 15per cent.

Denim was originally dyed with indigo dye extracted from plants. In South Asia, indigo dye was extracted from the dried and fermented leaves of Indigofera tinctoria, known as natural indigo.

In Europe, use of Isatis tinctoria, or woad, can be traced back to the 8th century BC, although it was eventually replaced by Indigofera tinctoria as a superior dye product. However, most denim today is dyed with synthetic indigo dye.

In all cases, the yarn undergoes a repeated sequence of dipping and oxidation—the more dips, the stronger the color of the indigo.

Prior to 1915, cotton yarns were dyed using a skein dyeing process, in which individual skeins of yarn were dipped into dye baths.

Rope dyeing machines were developed in 1915, and slasher or sheet dyeing machines were developed in the 1970s; both of these methods involve a series of rollers that feed continuous yarns in and out of dye vats.

In rope dyeing, continuous yarns are gathered together into long ropes or groups of yarns – after these bundles are dyed, they must be re-beamed for weaving. In sheet dyeing, parallel yarns are laid out as a sheet, in the same order in which they will be woven; because of this, uneven circulation of dye in the dye bath can lead to side-to-side color variations in the woven cloth. Rope dyeing eliminates this possibility, because color variations can be evenly distributed across the warp during beaming.

Denim fabric dyeing is divided into two categories: indigo dyeing (Indigo dye is unique shade of blue) and sulfur dyeing (Sulfur dye is a synthetic organic dye and it is formed by sulphurisation of organic intermediates, this contains nitro or amino groups). Indigo dyeing produces the traditional blue color or shades similar to it. Sulfur dyeing produces specialty black colors and other colors, such as red, pink, purple, grey, rust, mustard, and green.

Most denim is made today on a shuttleless loom that produces bolts of fabric 60 inches (1,500 mm) or wider, but some denim is still woven on the traditional shuttle loom, which typically produces a bolt 30 inches (760 mm) wide.

Shuttle-loom-woven denim is typically recognisable by its  selvage , the edge of a fabric created as a continuous cross-yarn reverses direction at the edge side of the shuttle loom.

The selvedge is traditionally accentuated with warp threads of one or more contrasting colours, which can serve as an identifying mark.

Although quality denim can be made on either loom, selvedge denim has come to be associated with premium products since final production that showcases the selvedge requires greater care of assemblage.

The thickness of denim can vary greatly, with a yard of fabric weighing anywhere from 9 to 32 oz (260 to 910 g), with 11 to 14 oz (310 to 400 g) being typical.

Particularly with denim jeans, a significant amount of the aesthetic treatment of denim occurs after the denim has been cut and sewn into the final garment.

Many denim articles are washed to make them softer and to reduce or minimize shrinkage even beyond what sanforisation prevents.

Significantly washed denim can resemble dry denim which has faded naturally over extended use. Such distressing may be supplemented by chemical treatments or physical techniques such as stone washing.

Natural fading on a worn pair of selvedge jeans. Such patterns are sometimes referred to as 'whiskers' or 'honeycombs'.

Over time dry denim will fade, which is considered fashionable in some circumstances. During the process of wear, fading will usually occur on those parts of the article that receive the most stress. On a pair of jeans, this includes the upper thighs, the ankles, and the areas behind the knees.

To facilitate the natural distressing process, some wearers of dry denim will abstain from washing their jeans for more than six months. Most dry denim is made with 100 per cent cotton that d comes different countries.

Patterns of fading in jeans caused by prolonged periods of wearing them without washing are a way of "personalizing" the garment.

Between 1973 and 1975 Volkswagen produced the Jeans Beetle, which had denim interior trim and special exterior graphics for sale in Europe.

British artist ian Berry has been making art with only denim for well over a decade.

He is famed around the world for his photorealistic pieces all hand cut out of only denim of portraits and scenes.

In 2013, he was named as one of the top 30 Artists under 30 in the World by Art Business News.

Over 50 per cent of denim is produced in Asia, most of it in China, Bangladesh, Turkey, India and Pakistan.

Globally, the denim industry is expected to grow by over  4.8 per cent from 2022 to 2026, and the market value is expected to increase from $57.3 billion to $76.1 billion.

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