This is Part Two of our FRESH BLOOD series, where I sit down with the next generation of denim leaders and ask what they see that we may not.

FRESH BLOOD is about perspective. It is about how young professionals view sustainability, transparency, collaboration, and the future of this industry.

In this episode, I speak with Beyza Baykan, founder of HMS Hand Made Stone. At 26, with a background in mathematics and international relations from USC and experience at the World Bank, she chose to build a business inside denim rather than outside of it. HMS develops a patented, upcycled pumice alternative designed to reduce sludge, water use, and waste while maintaining the aesthetics brands expect.

But this conversation goes beyond product.

We talk about greenwashing. We talk about whether collaboration actually leads to change. We discuss transparency, ethics, regulation, and what responsibility designers and brands should carry. Beyza is candid about what surprised her in the industry and what she believes must change.

Fresh Blood is about listening to the people who are already shaping what comes next.

Have a listen.

Thank you to our sponsor Inside Denim.

Beyza Baykan
Founder & CEO of Baytech, HMS Hand Made Stone
HMS Hand Made Stone, Linked-In, HMS Instagram, Personal Instagram

Interested in being featured on The Jeansland Podcast as our next Fresh Blood guest?  Reach out!

Please follow us on: Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

This is our second two-part special, and this time I step back and listen.

Fresh Blood is about renewal. Every industry either regenerates itself or slowly hardens. In this episode, I sit down with Kaela Bonaquist from Lenzing and William Wood from Material Exchange to hear how the next generation sees denim, sourcing, fibers, and technology.

They are already inside the system. Upstream in fibers. In sourcing platforms. In the mechanics of supply chains. They are not nostalgic, and they are not sentimental about how things used to be.

They talk about traceability as a baseline expectation. Digital tools as normal. Automation as overdue. Sustainability not as a marketing layer, but as responsibility tied directly to cost, incentives, and decision-making.

We discuss fiber realities, cotton, polyester, Tencel, blends, and the tension between performance, price, and environmental claims. We get into transparency, government regulation, and whether parts of the industry are structurally misaligned with their own public promises.

And at the end, I ask them a simple question. If you ran this industry for a weekend, what would you change?

Part 1 sets the tone. This is less about criticism and more about expectation. If you enter this business today, what feels broken, what feels promising, and what simply feels overdue.

If the future of denim has a different voice, this is it.

Thank you to our sponsor Inside Denim.

Kaela Bonaquist
Business Development – East Coast & Canada, Lenzing Fibers Inc.
Lenzing Fibers Inc., Linked-In

William Wood
Product Development & Sales Manager

Please follow us on: Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Andrew sits down with Arne Koefoed, co-founder of WINK, to talk about how throwing parties slowly turned into a creative life.

Arne never planned on designing experiences. There was no event school, no formal path. It started with squats, punk parties, and rave culture, and with the realization that bringing people together could be just as creative as making an object. That first party set the tone for everything that followed.

Over time, that same instinct carried Arne from underground scenes to working with some of the biggest brands in the world. What’s striking is how little the spirit has changed. The scale is different, but the mindset is still about energy, emotion, and making people feel something real.

They talk about why the best events feel more like memories than productions, why fun is often misunderstood as something unserious, and how experience design is often less about control and more about trust. At its core, this is a conversation about creativity without a rulebook, about designing moments instead of things, and about how some of the most meaningful work begins by simply opening the door and seeing who shows up.

Thank you to our sponsor Inside Denim.

Arne Koefoed
Founder and Head of Ideas at WINK
Instagram, Linked-In

Please follow us on: Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Andrew reflects on a new report from the Transformers Foundation, Unlocking Equity in Innovation, and why so much meaningful innovation never makes it to market.

The supply chain spends years and real money developing better fibers, cleaner chemistry, and smarter processes, only to be told to prove everything in 18 months or less. Andrew shares a personal story about a breakthrough alternative to indigo that failed not because it didn’t work, but because the industry didn’t want to wait, didn’t want to risk change, and preferred the devil it knew.

Using examples like Tencel™, polyester, and stretch denim, Andrew reminds us that real innovation takes decades, not seasons. When brands push timelines and costs downstream, that isn’t innovation. It’s cost shifting.

The episode closes with reflections from Kingpins New York.

Thank you to our sponsor Inside Denim.

Please follow us on: Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

This is Part 2 of our two-part Jeansland special, Water: Above and Below.

In this episode, we continue the conversation with Rick Kellison and Brent Crossland, shifting from understanding the water problem to confronting what it will take to address it. The focus turns to the future of the TAWC (Texas Alliance for Water Conservation) project, why its work matters, and why keeping it funded is critical for farmers, brands, and the broader industry.

We talk about how farmers balance environmental responsibility with economic reality, why profitability is essential to sustainability, and why real progress happens when farmers teach farmers in the field, not on slides. The discussion also widens to water use beyond agriculture, including AI data centers, oil and gas, and the growing competition for finite water resources.

This episode is a direct call to action. For brands, retailers, and anyone serious about water, food, and fiber, the question becomes simple and uncomfortable. Will you help support the research, education, and knowledge sharing that agriculture will depend on in the decades ahead?

If you haven’t listened to Part 1 yet, it’s worth beginning here. This episode then carries the conversation forward into the harder questions and what’s truly at stake.

Thank you to our sponsor Inside Denim.

Brent Crossland Linked-In
Rick Kellison Linked-In

Texas Alliance for Water Conservation TAWC

Please follow us on: Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Today’s conversation is about something the denim industry rarely wants to look at directly, and that’s water. Not recycled water in factories. Not marketing claims. But the groundwater that actually makes cotton possible in the first place.

This is the first episode of a two-part Jeansland special called Water: Above and Below. For this conversation, I’m joined by Rick Kellison and Brent Crossland to talk about the Ogallala Aquifer and why it matters so much to American cotton, especially on the Texas High Plains, where cotton depends on supplemental irrigation to survive.

Rick spoke at our very first Transformers event back in 2015, where he warned the industry about water risk and the future of cotton on the High Plains. Nearly ten years later, we talk about what’s actually happened since then, how farmers have learned to do more with less, what an aquifer really is, why the Ogallala is a finite resource, and how much of U.S. cotton production depends on it.

We also talk about soil health, irrigation technology, forage systems, and why integrating cotton, cattle, and crop rotation can reduce water use while improving long-term farm viability. And we look at the disconnect between how brands talk about water, and how rarely they ask where their cotton’s water actually comes from.

This is Part One of a two-part series.

Part Two of 'Water: Above and Below' drops next week, where we dig into the work happening on the ground, the farmer-led research behind it, the endowment that keeps it going, and what brands can actually do if they want to make a real difference. We also widen the lens to look at other major water users, including AI and energy, and what all of this means for the future.

Brent Crossland Linked-In
Rick Kellison Linked-In

Texas Alliance for Water Conservation TAWC

Thank you to our sponsor Inside Denim.

Please follow us on: Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

A conversation with a friend about international politics turns into a simple question. If so much of the world is disturbed by the direction the United States has been taking, why doesn’t everyone just band together and try going it without the U.S.?

That question leads Andrew to what he calls the Jeansland Nations, the countries where most of the world’s denim is produced. From there, the episode becomes a closer look at supply chain realities and geopolitical truths, not judgments about people, cultures, or national character.

From China and Vietnam to Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Mexico, and Egypt, Andrew looks at where jeans are actually made today and what those countries reveal about stability, employment, and economic dependence.

This episode is not about taking sides. It is about understanding how power, labor, and money move through the global denim industry, and why doing things on your own is often more complicated than it sounds.

Thank you to our sponsor Inside Denim.

Please follow us on: Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Andrew sits down with Piero Turk, a longtime friend from the old Italian denim days, when companies were small and you learned the business by doing everything yourself.

For those who don’t know Piero, he’s a freelance designer who started in 1983 and has worked with major jean brands across Japan, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, New York, Italy, Turkey, Pakistan, and the UK. He’s collaborated with Andrew at Kingpins, and his ideas are widely respected and used. Original ideas are rare in this industry. Piero has had more than a few.

They revisit Team Kit, Japan, laundries, and why Italy once had a real advantage that was almost impossible to copy. Taste, proximity, and lived experience mattered in a way spreadsheets never could.

Then the conversation turns. Globalization, profit, and the things people don’t like to say out loud. Piero is blunt about luxury denim, calls out sustainability claims that ignore labor realities, and shares a pricing example that’s funny at first and then quietly disturbing.

The episode closes with one simple rule that could change everything: If you want to sell in the West, you follow Western labor and safety rules.

A simple idea. Very complicated consequences. We're happy to share this interview with him with you.

Thank you to our sponsor Inside Denim.

Piero Turk Instagram

Please follow us on: Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Happy New Year. 2026 is here and Andrew starts the year with a reset on where real power lives in the textile world.

He talks about the four major cotton traders: Louis Dreyfus, Cargill, Olam, and Ecom. Governments and sovereign wealth funds now control much of what the world consumes. Abu Dhabi owns 45% of Louis Dreyfus. Singapore and Saudi Arabia control Olam. Trading what we need is as powerful as trading oil, and most people in denim don't think about it.

Then Andrew shifts to Egypt. The Denim and Jeans organization is holding its second show in Cairo this month, and it's worth paying attention to. Egypt's textile industry is growing. New mills, Turkish IP, Chinese investment. Unlike so much of the industry hanging on or going backwards, Egypt is building forward.

A five minute reset on commodity power and why Egypt's rise matters. A hopeful way to start the year.

Thank you to our sponsor Inside Denim.

Please follow us on: Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

This week, Andrew sits down with Shamin Vogel, editorial director and co-publisher of of WeAr Media Group—the people behind WeAr Global Magazine, one of the most widely read fashion trade publications in the world, and WeAr Denim, the biannual deep dive for the denim supply chain, backed by a monthly newsletter that actually gets read—to talk about where fashion really is right now, and why so much of it feels off.

They dig into the tension between growth and meaning, why sustainability still has no shared definition, and how fashion lost its ability to lead culture instead of chase it. Shamin brings a rare, long-term perspective shaped by decades of industry observation, global publishing, and a deep belief that fashion is a lifestyle business first, not a financial spreadsheet.

The conversation moves easily from denim and luxury to retail, media trust, trade shows, and the uncomfortable truth about why doing nothing feels safer than taking risks. It’s not a hype-driven episode. It’s a clear-eyed one about perception, responsibility, and what actually lasts.

If you care about fashion beyond trends, and want to understand the forces shaping what survives next, this one’s worth your time.

Thank you to our sponsor Inside Denim.

Shamin Vogel
Editorial Director & Co-Publisher, WeAr Media Group & WeAr Denim
WeAr Media Group, WeAr Book Store, WeAr LinkedIn, Instagram
WeAr Denim Newsletter
Shamin's Personal Linked-In

Please follow us on: Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.