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How This New Denim Brand Is Building a Farm-to-Fashion Supply Chain

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How This New Denim Brand Is Building a Farm-to-Fashion Supply Chain

This month, founder Jessica Sheppard will launch Sheppard Denim Co., a men’s and women’s denim lifestyle brand that takes the upland cotton grown at her husband’s family farm, Williams Farm in the Texas Panhandle, through the supply chain. After leaving the family’s gin, the cotton is sent to Cone Denim’s mill in Mexico, where it is woven into custom “Sheppard” fabric. The fabric is then trucked to Los Angeles, where it is cut and sewn into jeans and jackets.

The brand is the brainchild of Sheppard, who grew up around farming and studied fashion merchandising at the University of North Texas. She first envisioned a farm-to-fashion brand in 2019, but she said the market wasn’t ready. At the time, the supply chain lacked transparency, and consumer awareness of fiber sourcing, sustainability, traceability and local production was still limited.

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Jerry Gannaway looks over a field in which he planted cotton July 27, 2011 near Hermleigh, Texas. Gannaway is among the majority of dry-land (non-irrigated fields) cotton growers in Texas whose crops have failed because of a severe drought in the region. The cotton in his filed should be about knee-high by now, yet most has not broken through the soil. The past nine months have been the driest in Texas since record keeping began in 1895, with 75% of the state classified as "exceptional drought," the highest classification.
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By 2024, Sheppard began cold-calling denim mills, including Mary Black, Cone Denim’s sales representative, who urged the mill to explore the partnership. “I think they saw the vision from day one, and they wanted to make this happen. We just had to figure out the logistics of making it happen,” Sheppard said.

“What really stood out to me was Jessica’s personal connection to the project,” said Blake Gaines, Cone Denim’s director of design and marketing. “Sheppard Denim wasn’t created around a trend or simply to launch another denim brand.


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