Nothing comes between CEO James Bartle and his vision to make Outland Denim a force for social and environmental good.
When Meghan Markle stepped onto the Dubbo tarmac in 2018 wearing jeans by ethical Aussie fashion brand Outland Denim – a social enterprise built on empowering survivors of sex trafficking through skilled employment – several things happened at once. The style sold out within the week, a months-long waitlist blossomed and founding CEO James Bartle was suddenly fielding calls from TV stations. For any startup founder, a brush with the “Markle Effect” is surely the holy grail but Outland Denim isn’t just any startup and Bartle – much like his B Corp-certified apparel line – is cut from a different cloth.
“It was amazing, of course,” he says, “and crucially we could employ an additional 46 seamstresses in Cambodia. But I was quite green and had never experienced growth like that. You make good and bad decisions through those periods… growing too fast isn’t always the right thing.”
It’s this unflinching self-evaluation that led to the creation of the brand’s much-lauded sustainability pillar, developed when the team realised the environmental impact the fashion industry was having on the very communities they were trying to help. Outland Denim now partners with universities and governments around the world to research innovations in something Bartle believes is at the heart of the solution to the climate crisis: “Actively leaving the planet healthier than we found it.” And he reckons they’re close. “We’ve been working on tech for a number of years now,” he says, referring to the development of new fibres that are better for the environment, “and we’re getting very close to launching that into the marketplace.”
While a duchess’s sartorial endorsement mightn’t have been Bartle’s defining moment of professional pride, he happily reveals what was. “Our very first employee came from a sexually exploitative background and used to sleep under a sheet of plastic,” he says. “After a few years working with us, she told us she was able to buy back her sister from a trafficker. I mean, that’s a career high right there.”