Cotton: From Field to Fashion

From Field to Fashion

Emily Bickford

ID: 3311 Texas Tech University

    Have you ever stopped to think what happens before you get a finished product such as a drapery panel for a window or an upholstered chair for your living room? From the field to the runway to your home, cotton is a wonderfully versatile and worldly important fiber used for many products, making it widely traded. In almost everything we touch, sleep on, see, or feel is inspired or made in some form of cotton. Cotton is a fluffy, white, naturally occurring fiber plant that is used in many areas of our lives. Cotton holds an important impact on America’s Past, Present, and Future, known as the most popular fabric in our lives.

Characteristics

Cotton is generally treated as an annual plant from a short shrub averaging from 2-6 feet tall. Cottons absorbance, year-round comfort, softness, performance, and durability are only selected qualities that make cotton the most popular fiber used on an everyday basis.  Due to the fibers structure that can hold up to 27 times its own water weight, cottons absorbance is the most liked quality after years of use. Cotton not only blends well in any aspect it’s used, but is also resistant to abrasion, sunlight and soil. The fiber has become the best selling fabric in the world and because of the commercial value; cotton signifies a substantial factor of foreign exchange earnings all over the globe.

History           

Unfortunately no one knows how old cotton is, but researchers have found pieces of cotton in the caves of Mexico dating back to 7,000 years ago. They also discovered that cotton was much like that grown in America today. In Pakistan, dating about 3,000 BC, cotton was being grown, spun and woven into cloth in the Indus River Valley. Around this time, the natives of Egypt were wearing and making the cotton clothing. It is known that upon Columbus’ arrival cultivated two types of cotton. Around 800 AD the Arab merchants brought cotton cloth to Europe, and when Columbus found America in, he found cotton first growing in the Bahama Islands. It is unknown how cotton traveled from the Old World to the New World, but one idea proposes that from the origins in Africa and Asia Minor trade routes were extant from the east coast of Africa and western coast of India. By 1500, cotton was known throughout the world. Cotton being very labor intensive crop to harvest and prepare for spinning, before Eli Whitney’s cotton gin this was all very hard and slow, but since the discovery of the gin the yield has increased greatly.  Cotton was first spun made by machinery and later made in a cotton gin. The cotton gin made new opportunities and possibilities of supplying large quantities to the vastly growing industry. Within 10 full years, the value of the U.S. cotton crop rose to millions. Today cotton is produced on 17 states across the southern United States and Texas being the leading producer of upland cotton.

Coming from a family that has grown cotton for many years, I have found firsthand how cotton has impacted and been used in my life. This Fiber has impacted my life, the fashion of my home and my clothing on an everyday basis. Cotton has given America and the rest of the world many opportunities and possibilities of growth and advancement.  Cotton has the natural qualities that people prefer, such as comfort, durability, versatility, that has maintain the position and reputation of the fabric of our lives for years in the past and years to come.