Two years in the making, these jeans are the antidote to fast fashion

When Levi Strauss invented blue jeans in 1873, it was a work of design. Made from denim reinforced with copper rivets, they can withstand years of manual labor while still projecting a light cool air. But today, jeans are just another example of disposable fast fashion. Brands like Shein and H&M release inexpensive, trendy pairs every season, designed to be thrown out within months—contributing to the 2 billion pairs released each year.

What would it take to turn back the clock and return to Strauss’ original vision for his iconic pants? Asket, a Swedish startup founded in 2015, is on a mission to find out. While fashion brands usually design new collections each season, Asket (Swedish term for “ascetic”) has created a permanent collection of 30 classic, versatile pieces that the company promises will last for years and never go out of style. . That approach flies in the face of how the fashion business has operated for the past half century, but Asket is proving there’s money to be made with this radical model: It’s profitable, generating $10 million in sales last year. It has just opened a stunning new headquarters in Stockholm, too.

As Swedes, Asket co-founders August Bard Bringéus and Jakob Dworsky grew up with a sense of pride in Ikea and H&M, the Swedish mega-brands that pioneered the business model of selling cheap, trendy goods to the masses. But by the time they attended the Stockholm School of Economics a decade ago, the pair were disillusioned with these companies, which helped create the culture of overconsumption that is accelerating climate change.

“Fashion design is about planned obsolescence,” says Bringéus. “You’re creating something with a certain date. When it’s on the shelf, your designers are already working on what’s coming out in two years. And you’re telling your customers that what you bought yesterday is no longer socially acceptable to wear next year.”

Ask turns this logic on its head. The brand has curated a permanent collection of men’s and women’s clothing that the founders believe will never go out of style. To do this, they studied the history of fashion to identify clothes that have stood the test of time. “There’s the same formula behind every product,” says Bringéus. “It always starts with some sort of functional garment: the t-shirt was a military undershirt, the polo was a tennis shirt with a collar to protect you from the sun, the Oxford shirt was for polo players at British universities who wanted a shirt that breathed. shirt. It becomes part of the subculture, then mainstream, then a wardrobe essential.”

Asket takes a lot of time to design each garment as it will remain in the collection forever. It took more than two years for her to develop her jeans, for example. The brand started by asking 20 independent product testers to wear jeans for 9 months to test the quality of the fabric. It then invited 300 customers to pre-order the jeans and provide detailed feedback about the fit. Through this process, Asket’s designers realized they needed to fit the jeans to two different body types—one slimmer than the other—to achieve a consistent fit. Only after these adjustments, the brand increased to full production. Three years later, Asket has sold 20,000 pairs of these jeans, which account for 15% of the company’s sales. The denim testing program also became the model for every garment introduced in the permanent collection—including Asket’s seven-piece women’s collection, which launched last year.

Bringéus says every piece of clothing his company sells is meant to withstand at least five years of continuous, rigorous use. This accounts for the brand’s prices, which are significantly higher than fast fashion but not quite luxury: T-shirts cost $45, Oxford shirts cost $140, and jeans cost $155. The brand sells cleaning products designed to extend the life of a garment and will send spare parts – such as buttons and threads – for repairs. (When clothes eventually reach the end of their lives, customers can send them to Asket, which will recycle the materials.) But this approach means the customer has no reason to return season after season to update the closet his, which is how most fashion brands make their money.

“We put all our efforts into getting new people to try us,” says Bringéus. “We don’t actively try to force our existing customer to buy things they don’t need.”