The Minerals Movement

Rola (Tokyo, 1990) is a woman of renaissance, with a career in modeling, TV, and music. The Japanese-Bangladeshi-Russian talent is an outspoken advocate for sustainability, following her lifelong motto “Start doing things that are friendly to both the earth and people”. She is always seeking styles with a story and sustainable manufacturing practices behind them. And coincidentally, we are too. Uniting forces on a collection that combines her two passions; fashion and environmentalism, in hopes of leaving a better impact on our planet with high quality, long-lasting designs.

The technique of transforming naturally sourced color pigments with rich hues into dyes, has been a common historical practice for centuries. Ancient civilizations and Renaissance painters used these natural dyes for art, clothes, and even makeup. It was a meticulous process that required the extraction of colors from minerals, plants and sometimes animals, before manually turning them into a dye. Now, at G-Star following the example of our predecessors, we are going back to the same process, and giving mineral dyes a fresh look in 2023. We dyed our denim with pigments extracted from sources, like volcanic rocks and soil. And on top of that, the denim was dyed with cold water, instead of warm. Cold-dyeing preserves energy, in comparison to the conventional dyeing process which uses a lot more heat.

When creating the collection, we made sure that all the practices involved were up to our standards. Not only is our denim dyed using naturally sourced colors, but we also ensured that the fabric itself is responsible. This denim fabric is made from 75% regenerative cotton and 25% recycled cotton, recognized by the Cradle-to-Cradle Products Innovation Institute and awarded a C2C Certified®Gold rating. This rating is based on the assessment of multiple levels of responsibility: ensuring the safety of the materials for humans and environment, enabling a circular economy, generating clean energy, safeguarding natural resources, and embracing fair labor practices. Making a positive step towards responsibility through every aspect of the production process.