ReBorn by LaundRe: How Circular Denim Is Getting a Second Life

Producing a single pair of jeans can require around 7,000-10,000 litres of water, from growing the cotton to dyeing and finishing the fabric. That’s a significant environmental investment for something many of us replace every few years, just because the trends have shifted from skinny to straight to wide (and back again).

The irony is that denim was never meant to be disposable.

Originally designed as durable workwear, denim is built from tightly woven cotton fibres and strong construction. A well-made pair can easily last for decades, softening and developing character over time. In theory, it’s one of the most long-lasting garments we already own.

In practice though, many jeans leave the system long before the fabric itself is worn out. They might sit unsold in warehouses, get returned to stores, or need small repairs that rarely make the priority list in modern retail supply chains. Perfectly good denim ends up going unused far earlier than it should.

This is where LaundRe’s ReBorn collection is changing the story.

Instead of producing new denim, the collection begins with jeans that already exist. At Reskinned, thousands of garments come through our takeback programmes, and some of the most interesting pairs are given a second chance through the ReBorn project.

These jeans are professionally cleaned, repaired and carefully reworked by the LaundRe team. What comes out the other side is a collection of one-of-a-kind pairs that feel like old favourites, but refreshed and ready to wear again.

Rather than treating old clothes as waste, ReBorn treats them as a starting point. With the right skills, tools and a bit of creative thinking, denim that might otherwise have been thrown away is brought back to life.

The result is simple: less waste, fewer new resources used, and great denim getting another chance to be worn. And those styles that once fell out of fashion? Suddenly they’re some of the most interesting pieces around.

Who Are LaundRe? The UK’s First Circular Denim Finishing Hub

LaundRe is the UK’s first dedicated circular denim finishing hub, designed to extend the life of existing garments while reducing the environmental impact of denim production.

Founded by denim specialist Salli Deighton, they are based in London, and bring 25 years of industry experience. Over her career Salli has worked with global denim brands Wrangler, Lee, Marks and Spencer and ASOS, developing a huge amount of knowledge about how denim is designed, washed and finished for the big brands. Seriously, there’s nothing that she doesn’t know.

Her insight was a pretty simple one (the best ideas often are!) Even though huge amounts of denim is already knocking about in the system, the industry is severely lacking in infrastructure to restore, refine and reuse it properly.

LaundRe was created to change that.

Instead of focusing on new manufacturing, the facility specialises in circular finishing, which is the process of cleaning, repairing, reworking and refining existing denim so it can return to market in high-quality condition.

There are four core things that LaundRe do:

ReFinish

Taking unsold and excess stock and turning it into finished garments for retail, helping brands to recover value from the dusty stock sitting in warehouses.

ReShore

Washing and finishing denim in the UK instead of overseas, which means that brands get their jeans faster, with less transport emissions and a much better understanding of exactly who and where their clothes are being worked on.

ReBorn

Transforming our old jeans into renewed contemporary clothes through advanced washing and finishing techniques (think big technical washing machines that transform jeans into something amazing).

ReEducate

Taking Salli and the team’s huge amounts of knowledge and wisdom and supporting brands, universities and product teams with all the training and technical knowledge they need to transform the UK into the denim experts.

Introducing ReBorn: Circular Denim Reimagined

The most sustainable pair of jeans is the one that already exists. There’s no doubt about it.

You can spend years developing new fabrics and clever technologies, but the reality is simple: we already have more than enough clothes on the planet. According to the British Fashion Council, there are enough garments in existence to dress the next six generations. So the smartest place we can start is with what’s already here.

At Reskinned, hundreds of pairs of jeans come through our takeback programme every single week. Some are perfect for resale straight away, but others might be a bit too worn, a bit too unusual, or just not quite right for the resale store.

Instead of sending those pieces straight for recycling, we pass them to the LaundRe team and let them choose the pairs with the most potential. These are jeans that still have strong fabric, great construction and plenty of life left in them, they just need a bit of expert attention for us to fall in love with them again.

From there, each piece goes through LaundRe’s specialist finishing process. The jeans are professionally cleaned, repaired if they need to be, and refined using advanced denim finishing techniques that bring out the character of the original garment.

It’s definitely not about erasing the past life of the jeans and pretending they’re brand new, but more like building their story into the pieces to make them extra special.

Instead of being hidden, each pair’s unique quirks and details are enhanced and transformed into jeans that feel authentic, but refreshed at the same time.

Just as importantly, this approach avoids the huge environmental cost of making brand new denim. By working with garments that already exist, the ReBorn collection reduces the need for new cotton, water-intensive dyeing processes, and energy-intensive manufacturing.

How Reskinned and LaundRe Source the Denim

The ReBorn collection starts with denim that’s already out in the world, because there is a lot of it.

At Reskinned, thousands of garments come through our system every week through brand takeback programmes, resale channels and returns. Our team sorts through every piece to decide what happens next. Some go straight to the resale stores, some are repaired and others are ready to be recycled.

But then there are the interesting jeans. The jeans that might not quite make the cut for standard resale might still have incredible fabric, structure and potential. Too good to send straight to recycling, we set them aside for projects like ReBorn.

Most of the denim we pass to LaundRe comes from a few different places:

• Customer takebacks: jeans sent back through brand takeback programmes when people are ready to part with them
  • Returns and unsold stock: pieces that made it back from shops or warehouses but were never worn
  • Pre-loved denim: second-hand jeans that come through resale channels
  • Good jeans that just need some help: pairs that are still structurally strong but need cleaning, repairing or refinishing before they can be worn again

Every pair is inspected by the Reskinned team before it moves forward. We’re looking for jeans with strong fabric, solid seams and good bones, even if they need a clean, a repair or a bit of expert refinishing.

Many of the pieces come from heritage denim brands such as:

• Levi’s
  • Lee
  • Wrangler
  • and other classic denim labels

These brands built their reputation on durability, which makes their older pieces perfect candidates for a second life. Many of the best pieces date from the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, when denim was often made with heavier cotton fabrics and tougher construction than a lot of modern mass-produced jeans.

Put simply, they were built to last, and that’s what they do.

Which makes them the perfect starting point for circular fashion: well-made garments that already have years of wear behind them, and plenty more life left to give.

The ReBorn Process: How Denim Is Reconditioned

Once a pair of jeans is selected, it moves into LaundRe’s specialist finishing process, which restores and refines each pair to bring out their unique charm.

Combining decades of expertise with low-impact modern technology, this is creating pieces that are totally one of a kind.

Here’s how it works:

1. Sourcing & Sorting
   The LaundRe team source jeans from our Reskinned warehouse. Each pair of jeans is inspected to check the strength of the fabric, stitching and overall structure. Only the ones with a solid foundation move forward into the ReBorn process. We want to make sure that your jeans are built to last for decades with you!
2. Ozone Sterilisation

The jeans are sanitised using a high-powered ozone system, which removes bacteria and odours without the heavy water use or harsh chemicals often used in traditional industrial washing. That means even if your jeans have been around for longer than you have, they are as clean as brand new cotton.

1. Laser Finishing
   Now for the cool part - the team adds unique designs, textures, detailing and fades with precision lasers. This means there’s no need for the older methods of making jeans look faded or textured, which expose workers and waterways to dangerous chemicals, and use a lot of water in the process. Lasers use none of that, and they’re just as futuristic looking as they sound.
2. Low-Water Nebulisation Wash
   A specialised nebulisation wash refines the colour and finish using a fine water mist rather than a full wash cycle. This again means using only a fraction of the water that would normally be used in conventional denim processing.
3. Final Quality Check
   Before the jeans arrive on the Reskinned online store, each pair goes through a final inspection to make sure it meets our quality standards and is ready to wear. Spoiler: They very rarely don’t!

And that’s how the magic happens. A lot of modern machines and creative ideas working together to make something old into something new, with the least environmental impact possible.

Why Every Piece In The ReBorn Collection is Unique

Traditionally, denim was all about scale and uniformity, meaning brands would create thousands of identical garments with the exact same wash, the exact same finish and the exact same fade.

We think you’re a little bit more original than that, and your jeans should be too.

Each ReBorn piece begins with a different starting point, a unique garment with its own wear patterns, fabric history and construction details. Even if we tried to make them all look the same, they would still have their own personalities and characteristics, so the LaundRe approach is to enhance them, not try and hide them away.

And that means no two pairs of LaundRe ReBorn jeans are exactly the same, and they never will be.

Subtle differences in fade, stitching, texture and detailing make every garment as individual as you.

Why Recycling Denim Matters

Denim is one of the most worn garments on the planet. From workwear to weekends, almost everyone owns at least one pair of jeans.

But what most people don’t realise is how resource-intensive they are to make.

According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the global fashion industry uses around 93 billion cubic metres of water every year. Denim is a big part of that. The UN estimates that making just one pair of jeans can require up to 7,500 litres of water, from growing the cotton to dyeing and finishing the fabric.

That’s a huge amount of water for something many of us replace long before it actually wears out.

When jeans are thrown away early, all the water, energy and raw materials used to make them are effectively wasted too. The environmental cost has already been paid, but the jeans themselves haven’t been worn anywhere near their full potential.

That’s why keeping denim in use for longer makes such a difference.

Projects like ReBorn focus on giving existing jeans a second life instead of making brand new ones. Rather than treating used denim as rubbish, the garments are cleaned, restored and brought back into circulation so someone else can wear them.

When clothes stay in use for longer, it means:

• less demand for new cotton to be grown
  • less water and chemicals used in production
  • fewer textiles ending up in landfill
  • more life squeezed out of the clothes we already have

Put simply, it’s about making the most of what already exists and making great jeans last the way they were always meant to.

A New Future for Denim

Circular fashion doesn’t mean less fashion-forward clothes.

With the right expertise, technology and care, jeans that might otherwise have been thrown away can be transformed into beautiful, wearable pieces all over again - the kind that will get you endless compliments every time you wear them out.

For us at Reskinned, it’s about proving that clothes don’t have to follow the usual path of buy, wear, throw away. When we have all the right systems in place, our clothes can stay in use for far longer than we’re used to.

For those of us who care about the planet, that means pieces that have already lived a life, been carefully restored, and are ready to be worn all over again.

And for the fashion industry, it hints at a different future, one where clothing isn’t designed for a single season, but built to circulate, evolve and last.

Shop the ReBorn Collection here on Reskinned.