Catching Up with Textile Expert Tricia Carey

Tricia Carey is ready for her next act. After spending nearly 25 years touting Tencel and denim innovations at Lenzing, then embarking on a rockier sojourn with Renewcell, Carey isn’t scrambling for a change. The opportunity to take a breather is a novel one for the Kingpins and Première Vision fixture, who studied at New York’s famed Fashion Institute of Technology before kicking off her career as a merchandising coordinator at Duet Textiles.

A position handling fabric R&D at Susan Bristol led to a merchandising management position at Courtaulds Fibers, which was later acquired by and absorbed into Lenzing. It was while managing the accounts of high-roller brands like Abercrombie & Fitch, Gap Inc., Levi Strauss & Co., Target and Victoria’s Secret at the Austrian fiber giant that Carey became interested in the then-burgeoning concept of circularity.

Since then, she has been named strategic advisor for textile traceability technology company FibreTrace and fashion sustainability platform Green Story. Carey has become one of sustainability’s most stalwart champions and—despite not wearing a lot of jeans growing up because she had to pay for the privilege during dress-down day at Catholic school—among denim’s biggest cheerleaders. In this lightly edited interview, we spoke with Carey about whether she still bleeds blue, her biggest lessons from Renewcell’s collapse and why the White House should appoint her its “fashion czar.”

Sourcing Journal: You stepped away from the denim frontlines while you were working on textile-to-textile recycling at Renewcell. Do you still consider yourself a denim head?

Tricia Carey: I always gravitate back to the denim market and I get a lot of energy from the denim market for sure. I mean, in the spring, I went to Kingpins on my vacation, and I’m doing it again because it’s such a network of industry friends, and I feel like they’ve always got my back. Some of it’s about the product and some of it’s about the community that comes together. I think that’s truly what makes the denim industry different from other areas. I have a lens across all the different segments of the industry, whether it’s ready-to-wear, home, intimate apparel. But with denim…it feels like going back to family.

Sourcing Journal: How much has the denim sector changed since you started getting involved, especially when it comes to sustainability? There was a time—and not so long ago—when denim production was practically synonymous with toxic chemicals and water usage.

TC: I think the industry kind of woke up to that around 2010. Over the past 10 to 15 years, the industry has been putting the impacts of denim—from the raw materials that are being used, like cotton, to finishing—under great scrutiny. One of the best, most impactful developments that has really changed the denim industry has been laser and ozone—that definitely has reduced, when you look at the amount of chemicals being used, the impact on workers, as well as increased the variety of different designs that designers can create.

When you look at some of the design capabilities that can be done now, anything can be done electronically. Even with laser and ozone, a lot of the software associated with it can help designers create in much better ways with less sampling. There’s also more understanding around cotton and creating proper certifications, as well as information sharing around raw materials that didn’t exist before. And indigo application, I think, is an area that will continue to have more development over the next three to five years.

Sourcing Journal: Are there any developments you’d still like to see happen or are on the cusp of happening but the industry isn’t quite there yet?

TC: Going back to some of the work that the Transformers Foundation is doing—I’m part of the founders’ group and I’m on the steering committee—some of it is around having the right language that everyone understands. It sounds so basic and simple, but there are misunderstandings because of language and a lack of a common understanding. I’d like to see more of a balance between brands and suppliers in how that true partnership is developed. I’d like to see more of an ingredient label on how jeans are being made, not just from a fiber content perspective, but the finishing of it so consumers can see how spinning is done, how denim is woven, how indigo is applied. I think that will give them a greater appreciation of the product. And this can tie into a digital product passport, right?

I’d like to see less greenwashing overall. And this kind of goes back to the language part—having proper words to describe what gets lost in translation around the world. And overall, since I’ve been working so much on circularity, how can there be true circularity and a hierarchy within that circularity? With denim, it’s a product that naturally is already being resold, and so how can we maximize that? How can we have the right business model to build that out? Levi’s has always had a high resale value. How can we continue that build more durable denim so that it can be resold?

Sourcing Journal: Let’s talk about Renewcell: its rise, bankruptcy and resurrection as a new company called Circulose. I know you get asked this a lot but what would you say have been your biggest learnings about how the industry approaches innovative new fibers and what needs to be done differently?

TC: I do get asked that a lot, and it truly was a great learning experience. And I would say that, overall, there’s a huge say-do gap that exists. I got to see inside pretty much all of those major U.S. and European brands to understand how they’re working, and I saw this difference between what a small company can do versus a global enterprise and the disparity that exists between the two sizes of companies.

I also learned a lot about managing expectations, and when expectations are too high, how difficult they can be to fulfill. I also learned about the role of multi-stakeholder initiatives in the industry transition, and they definitely play a huge role in getting everyone around the table. But everyone also has to be contributing when they’re around the table. Where the industry really needs more development around is building out some of these models and case studies that brands or suppliers can adopt. The complexities of our current system will not get us to where we need to be.

Sourcing Journal: What are your thoughts about where the industry went wrong in allowing such a mature and commercial-scale platform like Renewcell to fail at such a critical time?

TC: I think policy has been too slow to impact first movers in the market, for sure. I think everyone, on paper, can build out, “Oh this can work and that can work” but then the reality of that adoption—the trials that need to happen, the global logistics that have to fall into place—sets in. The runway needs to be much longer than what people are planning for.

And I even see this now in some of the current innovators and what they’re trying to put together. I mean, look at SB 707, [California’s Responsible Textile Recovery Act], that was passed. We still have another four or five years until that will be in effect. It’s just taking too long for policy. So where are the incentives? Companies are not thinking long-term at all because the model is built off quarterly sales, earnings and profits. And I don’t think they have a clear understanding that their goals are interdependent on what other companies are doing; you can’t achieve your carbon reduction without digging into Scope 3, into your suppliers. So we’re very much in this gridlock right now to get things moving.

Sourcing Journal: So you declined to join Circulose. What have you been up to? And where do you hope to end up?

TC: I was off during the summer; I wanted to have some space to think about what my next moves are. I want to continue to stay in the industry, to really drive into that change work with a great group of people. And so I’m still figuring that out very much right now.

When this all first happened, my husband gave me very good advice: make a to-do list of all those things I’ve been wanting to do that I didn’t have the time to do. So I’ve been going through a bit of that, like visiting the Tenement Museum and taking some time to reassess what’s going on and where my best place to add value to the industry. It’s also been great to have time to catch up with people. I’ve met wonderful people in the industry and they’ve been very supportive, whether it’s the innovator community or those within the supply chain that I’ve worked with for years.

I’ve taken some time to kind of level up on some industry knowledge that I’ve been wanting to understand more. I went to Munich for the Cascale conference and took the time to sit and listen to the panels rather than being involved in five things at once. So that part I’m really enjoying. I also wanted to learn more about AI, so I’ve been doing some online courses with that.

Sourcing Journal: Is there an ideal job for you?

TC: If the president of the United States needed someone for fashion and apparel, that would be really interesting, if they had the right agenda. Like what happened to the fashion czar idea? I mean the de minimis issue wouldn’t have been going on so long if we had a fashion czar.

Sourcing Journal: O.K. we’ll pitch that: Tricia Carey for fashion czar. Where do you see the denim industry in five or 10 years considering the legislation coming down the pike and increasing consumer awareness about the impact of their purchases?

TC: Is the average consumer really aware of the impact of their purchases? I think there’s a lot that needs to be done in consumer education. But the next generations are becoming more aware, are very curious and are asking questions. 

I think with extended producer responsibility coming on and perhaps in five years, when it’s monitored in force, we’re going to see more of that digital product passport coming into play. I think it will still take some time for circularity to truly get into the wheels but everything will have to be designed with circularity in mind. I think the denim industry has these opportunities for new business models around resale, which it’s been starting to explore. But there’s got to be also the technology behind bringing resale to market in a bigger way for denim.

I think that we’ll see shifts in customization for denim—and I don’t mean custom in that you have a different colored thread or whatever but truly having the right size and fit and having the right wash. We’ve always had that, but it’s been out of reach for most, but that’s the beauty of the technology that’s been developed around laser. We’ll also continue to see the integration of new fibers within the denim industry.

I think the denim industry is so unique in bringing circularity and fiber innovation into play because, one, there’s already a community together, which you don’t have in other industries, and you have more vertical supply chains: spinners, dyers, weavers and garment makers under one roof. You have many areas that you can impact in the product to change, and you have this technology that’s been built on over the years.

So in the next five to 10 years, the denim industry is well poised. However, there needs to be that demand coming from the brands and their willingness to step out of the way we’ve been doing things and the price point at which things were being done. I remember in 2000, when I bought my first pair of jeans, that was over $100. What’s happened since then that prices have just gotten lower and lower and lower? Where can we set a new level playing field so that there is room for innovation to happen in the next five to 10 years?

Sourcing Journal: Is this race to the bottom one of the big pain points for the industry?

TC: I think one of the biggest challenges in that race to the bottom is the suppliers must stand up, and they have to unify. There was an excellent presentation at the Cascale conference in Munich with Miran Ali [from the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association], where he said, “No more compromises.” We just kept compromising season after season, order after order, and that has, in part, led to the complete demise that they saw in the Bangladesh market. Those compromises will just continue to erode the market.

This is a part of Transformers: to sure that suppliers have a voice in the market and that there’s a way to level that playing field from a point of education, whether it’s by educating at a student level or by providing a thought leadership platform. We can’t get further if we don’t start thinking differently.

This article was published in the winter issue. Click here to read more.