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Nicola Coughlan’s go-to white jeans are made from undyed organic cotton — and they happen to be the best-looking pair of the summer.
White jeans have always operated on a kind of polite conspiracy. Everyone agrees they’re the essential summer piece; nobody wants to deal with the actual wearing of them. They sit at the intersection of aspiration and anxiety — perfect in theory, treacherous in practice, terrifying within ten feet of a plate of pasta. But this summer, the question of what to wear in white denim has a more interesting companion question: what went into making it?
When Nicola Coughlan — the Bridgerton and Derry Girls star who has become something of an accidental style authority — turned up at BBC Radio’s London studio in April wearing a creamy, trouser-fit pair of jeans from AKYN, it barely registered as a fashion moment. That, precisely, is the point. The AKYN Blake Ecru Jeans look like nothing more than a very good pair of ivory pants; what they are is undyed organic cotton denim, the ecru shade derived not from bleach but from the cotton itself, cut from mid-rise waist to frayed hem in a silhouette that reads effortless because it actually is.
AKYN was founded by Amy Powney — the former creative director of Mother of Pearl, who stepped away from the brand in late 2024 to build something she has described in terms more confessional than corporate. “Fashion is a linear system: extraction, manufacture, sale and then end of life,” she told WWD. “We’ve got an opportunity to lead by example, to show people how fashion can be done differently — and scaled. I want to show people what is possible, and to have fashion be a force for good,” Powney said.
The sustainable white jeans worth buying this summer
A conventional pair of jeans requires up to 1,500 gallons of water to produce; white denim — bleached, sometimes twice, chemically treated to read as an absence of color rather than the presence of one — is the most demanding version of that process. It is, essentially, the hardest pair to make clean.
Several brands have been working at this for years; the approaches differ — circular lease models in the Netherlands, solar-powered factories in California, cotton left entirely undyed — but the results share a quality that is harder to engineer than the sustainability itself. They look, above all, like jeans.
AKYN Blake Ecru Jeans
Undyed organic cotton holds its ivory tone without bleach or chemical processing — the pair that gets its look from what was left out, not what was put in.
DL1961 Bridget Boot High Rise Instasculpt
Less than ten gallons of water go into every pair of the high-rise Bridget jeans. These boot cut fit are made with Instasculpt technology to smooth, sculpt, and conform to your body for the perfect fit.
Reformation Val 90s Straight Jean
Made from 100 percent regeneratively grown cotton through Reformation’s Climate Neutral-certified supply chain, this mid-rise, zero-stretch straight leg carries its eco-credentials without ever broadcasting them.
Nudie Heidi Ivory Jeans
Swedish-made from 100 percent organic cotton with free lifetime repairs at any Nudie store worldwide, built on the premise that a pair you mend is a pair you don’t replace.
Triarchy Onassis V-High Rise Wide Leg Off-White
The first stretch denim made with natural rubber instead of synthetic elastane, eliminating microplastic shedding from the wash cycle without sacrificing any of the give.
Warp + Weft The Big Easy
Solar-powered factories and sustainable dye systems bring water use down to fewer than 10 gallons per pair, against a conventional industry standard of 1,500.
Citizens of Humanity
From the Humanity collection, 100-percent cotton jeans with a tapered barrel-legged silhouette.
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