Versace Joins Club of Those Who Won’t Sandblast Jeans

Love jeans with that relaxed, sandblasted look? You’re going to have to find a different brand than Gianni Versace.

The Italian design house has now joined Gucci and H&M (for which Versace is producing a collection this fall) by banning the practice after much outrage and lobbying by the Clean Clothes Campaign.

To get that look, “workers fire sand under high pressure at jeans” (according to the Courier Post Online), a practice that has led to the deaths of workers in Turkey, Bangladesh, “and other countries” where the process is done manually, the site reports. What's more, sandblasting leaves “large amounts of silica dust” in the air for workers to breathe. It can cause silicosis, a pulmonary disease that can be a killer.

Those things probably aren’t the first things  on the mind of a consumer when he or she is buying Versace. And now they don’t need to be.

The Clean Clothes Campaign used Facebook and other social-networking sites to spread the word about Versace and sandblasting. Versace even stopped allowing the public to publish comments on its Facebook page since its wall was being overwhelmed with comments about sandblasting, according to Mashable.

The organization's press release on Versace's move notes that other brands on board with anti-sandblasting include Benetton, Bestseller, Burberry, C&A, Carrera Jeans, Charles Vögele, Esprit, Gucci, H&M, Levi-Strauss & Co., Mango, Metro, New Look, Pepe Jeans and Replay, while it's encouraging Dolce & Gabbana and Armani to sign on, too.