Triarchy is a US jeans brand born in 2018 from the collective passion of two brothers and their sister (hence its name, referring to a kingdom ruled by three leaders) driven by the mission to transform the denim industry.
Adam Taubenfligel, co-founder and CEO, has participating the round table “Triple match for fair fashion” during last Denim Premiere Vision–together with entrepreneurs and creatives, Ksenia Schnaider and Andrea Bonfini–describing how Triarchy is committed to pursue its goal to offer carbon-negative jeans, and bring a structural change in the market.
What does Triarchy mean?
The “Triarchy” name stands for a kingdom or a state of three rulers. And so my brother and sister and I founded the company together. It’s the three of us, three heads ruling their brand.
How does Triarchy wants to change the denim industry?
In the last ten years the entire fashion industry has learned how to describe itself differently, without meaningfully changing how it operates.
Most brands, understandably, have started optimizing within the system. They reduce water here, swap a material there, and improve efficiency incrementally. Those efforts are not without value, but they don’t address the core issue.
What we are doing is the future of denim. I think we are struggling much in this industry because we keep trying to make old technologies sustainable, that were never supposed to be so. But if you really want to change you have to invent something new.
At Triarchy, we made a decision early on that if we were going to talk about change, we had to be able to prove it, at every step. Not in a campaign, not in a capsule, not in copy, but in the product itself–in the process and in the math.
What did Triarchy invent?
Since our brand’s inception in 2018, Triarchy has pioneered groundbreaking technologies, setting real-world examples of how to improve the denim-making process.
We started by using only certified organic cotton, recycled cotton, Tencel and Refibra, alongside the world’s first plastic-free stretch–Candiani Coreva denim made with natural rubber stretch–offering jeans that will biodegrade in two years or less at end of their life, instead of the industry standard 200+ years for plastic based stretch, among other responsible innovation products.
Now we are launching digitally dyed denim.
How does that work?
Instead of improving an existing system, we have removed some parts of it entirely. We didn’t focus on making denim “more sustainable,” but on eliminating the need for some of its most resource-intensive steps altogether.
With our digitally dyed denim, we’re shifting the creation of the final look upstream, before the garment is constructed.
We use no chemical aging, no excessive water consumption, no repeated washing cycles to arrive at an end state.
We practically screen print a denim fabric picture on the fabric, but this is actually dyeing on the molecular level in the fabric. So it basically allows us to print an on-demand pair of jeans that ages and degrades as a regular indigo dyed jeans. Though it essentially turns denim into a cut-and-sew garment.
This way you can really produce jeans without producing leftovers, or optimize the use of the fabric. Plus we eliminate the laundry portion of denim entirely and can print a jeans pair in about 20 minutes, despite that waiting for five weeks before an order is delivered.
Can you tell us more in detail about the printing technique?
We are using ZDCH approved chemical inks for printing, and algae-based fixing agents, therefore they’re all harmful chemical-free. This technique was developed by a Swiss company and we produce the jeans in our laboratory in LA.
What about the fabric?
In theory, you can use any fabric you want. Though you have to chose a specific kind of fabric whose weave shall not be too loose nor too tight, if not the printing won’t register properly. So you really have to find that happy medium. Though we did manage to find one organic cotton that’s woven perfectly, therefore you can practically print on every material.
Will these jeans be more expensive than traditional ones?
This technology does bring the price down, and it also eliminates the conversation around factory minimums too.
Because in theory, if, let’s say, a store orders a 50-unit reorder, I can just print 50 pairs of jeans. I don’t have to make 500, because that’s usually the minimum for traditional industry methods. Instead I can just print 50.
And even if the cut and sew will be more expensive for fewer units, I won’t have to overcut. And then I don’t have a problem with inventory. Actually, every brand makes more than they can sell, and we have hundreds of thousands of extra garments every season. That’s why many have to sell them at off-price and why all these big retailers are going bankrupt. This new system solves that problem too, because you don’t have to overcut anymore.
What about prices?
They will retail for US$298, as our regular jeans do, but they won’t cost, for instance, around US$500, as it happens when some elaborate wash, like what our digital dye denim features, a wash that alone costs US$25.
I just took the first collection of this new product to market it, and at present, the wholesale and the retail prices are the same, as we have right now, as you take into account freight and tariffs. But I think for sure, as we continue using the technology, it will get cheaper.
Triarchy is committed to redesigning the industry’s approach to cutting emissions, but how is it dealing with the EU Green Deal matters?
Our aim has always been to make Triarchy a carbon-neutral brand. That’s why already in 2019 we added a digital product passport in Triarchy garments.
I’ve always thought we were very ahead of the curve, and I thought by 2026, everyone else would have had it too, but that is not happening so much yet. Though being transparent has been a non-negotiable for me since day one.
Moreover, I have always thought it had to come from a third-party auditor because otherwise that would be greenwashing. That’s why we started working with third-party auditors to provide total transparency on triarchy.com and via unique QR codes embedded in each garment.
Each pair already carries information about our supply chain via blockchain, via Retraced. Via a second embedded QR code, we share the jeans specific consumption statements and their responsible manufacturing practices, wash processes, and carbon offset project verifications via Renoon.
All this is requiring significant investment. How do you manage it all?
This is a structural change, that doesn’t fit neatly into existing supply chains, nor it aligns with how factories are currently set up. That’s how we want to create a new baseline.
That’s why this isn’t about claiming to be “better.” It’s about operating in a different category entirely.
Our goal is not to optimize the old system, but to move beyond it and take a lane we never knew existed.
But this requires rethinking processes that have been in place for decades, it requires investment and accepting that progress won’t always look like growth in the short term.
But over time, these shifts compound. And what once felt like an outlier approach becomes the new standard. Quietly, and then all at once.