What do you do when you have a bunch of rare, dead stock denim? If you’re Wrangler, you team up with Nashville denim brand imogene + willie to build your first totally Made-in-America jeans in years.
For the collection, Wrangler gave imogene + willie access to its historical patterns, including the iconic 1964 10MWZ, along with fabrics developed with Mount Vernon Mills, the last large-scale denim mill still operating in the US. It marks the first Wrangler-branded apparel line produced entirely in the USA in decades, made possible by imogene + willie’s own domestic supply chain.
The Cone Mills White Oak plant, once the largest denim producer in the world, shut down in 2017. Wrangler had been sitting on its remaining stock of the fabric ever since; this collection used the last of it.
The first drop centers on a raw selvedge take on the 10MWZ, priced at $350 for men’s, fully raw and cut from 14.75-ounce denim. That’s some seriously hefty denim, so expect a pretty serious break-in period…and some incredible, unique fades afterward.
The full collection ranges from $48 to $350 and includes archival labels, pocket flashers, and packaging reworked through imogene + willie’s design process. It’s available now at Wrangler.com and imogeneandwillie.com, with two more drops planned.
imogene + willie prove the U.S.A. can still make things
This isn’t imogene + willie’s first collaboration built on domestic production. The brand previously teamed up with fellow Nashville company Weiss Watch Co. on a hand-assembled automatic, and its whole identity rests on manufacturing everything itself.
Wrangler, meanwhile, has leaned on its Cone Mills connection before, most notably in a 2021 archival collection made at its Greensboro service center. But that project worked with fabric the mill was still producing. This one is explicitly working with what’s left after the mill closed for good. There’s a hard, finite supply here, not a fabric Wrangler can simply reorder once the run sells out, so this collab is a really interesting one for any denim heads who appreciate American-made.
It’s a huge vote of confidence in imogene + willie, as well. Big heritage brands love invoking their archives, but actually handing a smaller, values-aligned label the keys to both the patterns and the last physical stock of a legendary fabric is a huge bet.
Where to buy it
The imogene + willie x Wrangler collection is available now at Wrangler.com and imogeneandwillie.com, priced from $48 to $350.
