Cotton shares story through top brands
IN A consumer landscape that is clamouring for provenance, cotton is claiming its name in our domestic clothing market.
Jeanswest has collaborated with Cotton Australia to produce a fashion line around woven shirts and knitwear that celebrates the locally produced fibre, and shifts focus to traceability in supply chain for the clothing retailer.
Cotton Australia’s manager of supply chain relationships, Brooke Summers said the shift in approach for Cotton Australia had begun four and a half years ago with its Cotton to Market program.
“We realised that the cotton industry had done a huge amount around sustainability over the last couple of decades, but in our most recent audit – we do full environmental audits over the whole industry every decade – and the last one showed basically everything’s going pretty well, still a few tweaks we can do, but enormous progress in terms of water use efficiency, use of pesticide, but the thing we hadn’t been doing well was telling our story to the supply chain, or anyone else outside our industry,” Brooke said.
“It was a lightbulb moment for our industry, and it was interesting, because at the same time the textile landscape was changing very fast. Brands and retailers were becoming much more interested in telling where their raw materials were coming from, and they were wanting to make sure they were coming from places with high sustainability and social standards.”
Cotton Australia is working with more than 20 different retail and clothing brands to build a name for Australian cotton, which includes traceability.
“Five years ago, you couldn’t buy a stitch of Australian cotton. Or, you probably could, but it would have been blended with other cotton from around the world, and certainly not called out as Australian cotton.”
Ahead of the collection launch this month, Jeanswest travelled to Narrabri, NSW, with fashion and lifestyle blogger Chelsea Thomas, of I Heart Bargains, to take a closer look at the very beginning of the supply chain.
Rural Weekly asked Chelsea about her first-hand perceptions.
“Pulling up next to the cotton fields for the first time was a breathtaking experience,” Chelsea said.
“I have never seen anything like it. White, bobbly, cotton plants as far as the eye could see. It was an ocean of cotton set against a backdrop of searing blue skies. I was able to walk through rows and rows of cotton plants.”
The familiarisation tour took in cotton farms as well as other aspects of the supply chain.
“The Narrabri community is a special one. The cotton fields are the heart of the town and most people are connected with the fields in one way or another,” she said.
“We explored and discussed all the different stages of growing, picking, and processing the cotton – from how the cotton is planted, positioned, picked, through to how it is ginned and prepared for exporting.
“I was blown away by the fact that cotton bales are given numbers, so that the cotton can be GPS trackable and traceable from field to fashion.”
She said that just as people were looking to natural fibres in general, they were also looking for a supply chain that offered quality and traceability.
“The Australian market is craving transparency from brands across a number of categories. We are more conscious of what we eat and where products come from.
“More and more, especially with fashion, consumers are becoming conscious of looking out for natural fibres; of what they wear and where it comes from.
“It’s fantastic that brands like Jeanswest are committed to standing beside local communities with the production of Australian Cotton collections. Australian Cotton is a high quality natural fibre, and I was really pleased to join Jeanswest’s Australian Cotton journey in Narrabri.”