The Naturalls collection combines lower-input US cotton, renewable-content LYCRA fibre and resource-saving finishing, illustrating how denim decarbonisation increasingly requires interventions across the entire value chain.
A four-company collaboration involving Avalo, The LYCRA Company, Pakistan’s Neela by Sapphire Fibres and Italian textile-chemistry specialist Soko has unveiled Naturalls, a lower-carbon denim capsule during Climate Week NYC, held September 20–27. The project integrates interventions from cotton cultivation through spinning, weaving, garment manufacturing and finishing.
Cotton emissions tackled at source
Naturalls uses Avalo’s Low-Footprint Cotton, developed using computational crop-breeding technology. Avalo reports that its 2025 Texas crop required zero irrigation and 71% less synthetic fertiliser, while an Indigo Ag cradle-to-gate life-cycle assessment found 47% lower greenhouse-gas emissions than the conventional benchmark used in the study.
The fabric also incorporates Renewable LYCRA fibre, made with bio-derived QIRA feedstock. The LYCRA Company says 70% of the fibre content comes from renewable resources, with a screening LCA indicating up to a 44–45% lower carbon footprint than equivalent conventional LYCRA fibre.
Importantly, “plant-based denim” should not be read as meaning every component is plant-derived; the stretch fibre retains non-renewable constituents.
Pakistan provides the manufacturing bridge
Neela by Sapphire Fibres handled fabric development across spinning, weaving and garment production, positioning a Pakistani denim manufacturer at the centre of a field-to-garment innovation project.
Soko then applied its Hydrogel finishing system, which the company says can reduce water consumption by up to 85%, energy use by 68% and processing time by 50% by consolidating treatments into a single bath. Its RARE system uses naturally derived mineral pigments with a natural binder.
The real innovation is integration
Naturalls is significant less as a single “sustainable denim” product than as a demonstration of stacked reductions: lower-input agriculture, lower-carbon stretch fibre, mill engineering and reduced-resource garment finishing.
For denim exporters, particularly Pakistan, that points toward a stronger competitive proposition: brands increasingly need suppliers capable of combining performance, verified carbon data, lower process impacts and traceability in one commercially scalable product. The next test is whether projects such as Naturalls progress from showcase capsules to repeatable, high-volume brand programmes.
