I’ll confess, I love the casual wear that cotton has turned me onto. You may know how Lee Jeans won my heart and hips. But for work and other occasions that tend to need a different look, I frequently turn to cotton dresses. Sadly, as I am shopping far too often the fabric doesn’t live up to my touch test so I have found trusted sources to return to. 

Some links in this post may result in my getting a commission if you make any purchases. 

Why cotton dresses?

There are a range of fibers available these days for sure. Cotton dresses are the way to go for several reasons.

• Wash & wear — Being able to wash and wear these from home or even quickly launder them when I’m on the road.
• Breathability — Whether you are dressing for a hot & humid summer day or headed to a conference where you need to wear a blazer, having the ability to be comfortable and better regulate your temperature is good. Layering always works well when you talk natural fibers.
• Travel friendly — When you travel as much as I do, you think about how well your clothes travel — that means both how they do when you are pulling them out of a suitcase to wear and that you don’t mind darting through an airport in if needed.
• Layers work well — Lots of people put these away as fall and winter arrive. Not me! With a denim jacket or a blazer, it takes the look up a notch and is still comfortable. That works with air conditioning or if someone has way too much heat blowing, that jacket slides off and I still look good.

I have tried a variety of brands and while a few times I’ve bought something. In the last few years though, I have found a brand that offers good styles & colors with a reasonable price tag. And I love that I can simply drop by a local store rather than buying them in a limited time sell online. Though I also love ordering a few online from time to time, love knowing what to expect in sizing, quality, etc. 

The Best Cotton Dresses

I have two favorites. One I order online and one I can stumble into in a store locally. 

There are a few things that stand out for me with both:

• Diversity of cuts — In the past few years I have found sundresses, maxi dresses and several other cuts. I’ve also found denim skirts and dresses all through the product line.
• Quality that lasts — I’ve found the quality of the fabric and dyes stick with me. In fact, people sometimes ask if what I’m wearing is new because the colors are sharp and the fabric shows no wear despite numerous runs through the washer and dryer.

Online, my go to dress site is Svaha. I go back time and time again. They have smart and fun patterns in their line. I have some that people think are cool prints and when they look closer they get cooler cause it shares something related to science, writing, etc. And their dresses all have pockets ya’ll. And I probably bought more than half a dozen dresses and several pairs of leggings before I realized I could make a commission of any kind!

Locally, the brand I’m talking about is Chaps by Ralph Lauren and it is sold at Kohl’s. (This post isn’t sponsored but they are welcome to reach out as I wear so much of it I’m definitely an authentic ambassador. I could use more though!) For me, I like that the dresses both look fresh and classic. The colors are in the parts of the color spectrum that stick with you season after season. Classic blues, reds, greens, etc rather than the hot new fluorescent.

And as anyone who goes to Kohl’s knows, it is possible to find things on sale or where Kohl’s cash is part of the equation.

What’s your favorite cotton brand for business / nice casual dresses?

The post Finding Great Cotton Dresses for Year-Round Wear appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

I have always had a passion for denim. I can still remember my first pair of Toughskins — they were green with those reinforced knees. I wanted to wear them a lot more often than the hand-me-downs I would get from my sister.

Through the junior high and high school years, jeans played a big part in every day life. Levi’s were the base for most of us but I can still remember Lee, Gloria Vanderbilt and Calvin Klein jeans all. It wasn’t til college that I was introduced to Wranglers and the farmers and ranchers that preferred them.

There were quite a few years where I couldn’t wear jeans to work and with a tiny apartment in NY, my closet was cut back. Eventually though, I got back to a culture where jeans were a regular part of the wardrobe again. More of them offered a bit of spandex to keep their shape. I bought a lot of jeans online and somewhere along the line, jeans started being as I started making a bit more money I started buying “nicer” brands like Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren that I found were long enough for me.

A few years ago though Lee Jeans got my attention. They shared a cotton bale & asked a trivia question on their Facebook page and several friends tagged me to be sure I’d see it. I thought it was cool and shared a post about it. I already had a post that said you can make 215 pairs of jeans from a bale, according to the National Cotton Council. Someone from Lee commented saying thanks and offering me a thank you gift which I was happy to accept!

Can you see how Lee started winning?

They said I could just pick out a pair & tell them my size. I really wasn’t sure on sizing, etc but when I saw they listed talls on the site, I was hopeful and checked out the charts. The jeans I ordered fit perfectly! I was hooked and found myself buying another pair now and then over the years, trying different cuts and washes.

This year when I went to Dad 2.0 Summit with work, I was intrigued to see Lee Jeans among the sponsors and when I got there, was pumped to find out they set up a Dad 2.0 Denim Shop.

a selfie from Dad 2.0

I wandered in assuming I’d simply tell them about the interaction years ago and how I found I liked their products — afterall, I am long past wearing guys clothes. It was fun seeing the dads come in, get suggestions on new styles or colors, etc. But Lee’s team had their stuff together and actually had a small number of women’s jeans and denim jackets too!

You have to admit…. that new denim jacket I left with looked good too!

As mentioned above, I  have received a free pair of jeans and jacket from Lee over the years. They never asked me to write about it but I wanted to anyway, so I’m just sharing my personal thoughts. Lots of companies get lots of complaints posted online so I wanted to post happy thoughts about one. 

The post How Lee Jeans Won My Heart & Hips appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

Saw this video floating around and have to admit, it left me wordless. I see a few familiar faces (after all the cotton industry is pretty small). But somehow, I didn’t know anything about this video til this week! And it was shown at a meeting SIX MONTHS AGO!

Great video that shows cotton from the farm to the runway! Are you wearing Texas cotton? I LOVE IT! Have LOTS of blue jeans to show for it too!

Texas Cotton Association from Studio 84 Productions on Vimeo.

The post Cotton Is Life in Texas — Cotton Farmers Tell Their Story VIDEO appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

I have to admit I’m up earlier on this Sunday morning than I wanted to be, but am glad that I went ahead and got up rather than lounging in bed. I have an odd routine where I sometimes read new blog posts first thing in the morning. When I saw this post about a daughter’s look at clothes and other goods in comparison to her dad’s focus on money — see Daddy, why can’t you just get money out of one of those machines? I was struck by his saying he pays $12 for a pair of jeans and can’t understand his daughter’s paying $150.

Fast forward 45 minutes or so and imagine eating breakfast and hearing the other end of the spectrum. That’s exactly what happened when I turned on CBS Sunday Morning — I was intrigued that the first story I saw was about a couple making nice polo shirts. The shirts by a wife & husband team in Atlanta under the KP MacLane brand are definitely high-end polo shirts. Read this description from a recent Wall Street Journal article about the $155 polo shirt:

Every piece of clothing has a story: There’s far more to a $155 polo shirt than a yard of fabric, four buttons and a length of thread.

The tale of a KP MacLane polo shirt offers a rare look inside the planning and global transactions behind the clothes people wear. To begin, though, there is an actual KP MacLane—Katherine, who founded the brand with her husband, Jared MacLane.

The MacLanes met while working as sales managers at Hermès in Beverly Hills. They shared a fondness for polo shirts, and their closets were full of versions by Ralph Lauren, Hermès, Lacoste, J.Crew, Vineyard Vines and others. When they decided to move to Atlanta and launch an entrepreneurial venture last year, their minds went to those polos. “From the beginning, we knew we love classic pieces,” says Ms. MacLane. Mr. MacLane adds, “We want to take it to the next level.”

via Polo Puzzle: What Goes Into a $155 Price Tag? – WSJ.com.

So what impacts the price spectrum of cotton goods?

Instead of looking at low costs, they put the focus on making the best shirt & then One of the things the reporter asked the MacLane’s about their shirts as she runs through the costs (love the DVR for this sort of thing! The WSJ article has a detailed chart on the costs.

• Fabric (1 yd) $6.10 – 6.50
• Buttons .03 each (4)
• Hand embroidered bags $2.90
• Produced in the USA  costs 75% more than Asia $11/shirt
• Thread, labels, vent tape, shipping all add up

That gives you the cost of goods on the high quality or expensive end of the spectrum. From there the cost to the consumer includes costs of wholesalers and profit margins. The way the MacLane’s broke their product down is:

• Cost of goods                             $30
• Wholesale                                  $65
• Retail                                          $155

The grown & made in the USA piece is less than $20 or around 2/3 of the costs of goods on this particular item.I find it interesting that you could potentially get that quality product & workmanship at a price that would made it more reasonable since the markup in wholesale & retail is based there.

You can find out more about KP MacLane’s line of clothing through @KPMacLane on Twitter and the KP MacLane blog. On the low-cost end of the spectrum, where you find the $12 jeans and $10 polo shirts, you will find cheaper grade fabric & buttons, no branded marketing and packaging, manufacturing in countries with significantly lower costs of living, lower end wholesalers and retailers.

What impacts how people view the price spectrum?

I have to say, that seeing the price of cotton goods so clearly put in my face on a Sunday morning, there are a couple of factors that came to mind immediately for me:

• Budget – This is an automatic limiter for lots of people. I’ve lived in lots of different places and there are always members of the community who live on the low cost end of the spectrum for clothes, housing and everything else. There have also been folks on the high-end but reality is most of America lives in the middle somewhere.
• Value – There are a couple of value components that come to mind — what is being looked at, style and quality. The MacLane’s obviously love the styling of polo shirts as a primary part of their wardrobe and they highly value quality. On the other hand, I have friends who think that style is only for you to wear if you are golfing and friends who wear similarly styled shirts for work in jobs which require significant muscle so the shirts take a beating and get replaced. Some people view their wardrobes as a major factor and others simply as a needed component to get their day underway. Again, I think a lot of us fall in the middle across the different kinds of value.
  

  My favorite lightweight hoodie - high quality US Pima cotton with the New York Yankees on it - comes in handy often. Worth the extra price I paid.

Interplay of budget and quality – As you have different budget flexibility, people get to where they may occasionally splurge on things they value — that’s where I think most of us fall. It certainly is for me. And I think how we view those factors are the very things which drive textile mills, designers and stores to create & carry some of the things that are for sale. They are market-driven and we are the market so our approach matters.

My Approach

I have clothes that I splurge on for the fit or style and I have bought t-shirts that I almost looked for a disposable quality because I simply needed something at that moment and didn’t have time to look for something I would necessarily want to keep around for years. I do value clothing that is  of good quality and grown and made in the USA (you can learn more about what I know and think about US cotton in my cotton 101 series) so I am willing to pay more for it for classic items that I will wear for some time to come. I haven’t bought a $12 pair of jeans in a long time unless they were from a radical clearance sale cause I just don’t think they are normally cut to flatter me, but I don’t pay $155 for them either. I want jeans that will wear well and hold their color for a while. I don’t think that I place much importance on some of the little things like buttons that are more for show than use and I don’t care much about the bag the shirt comes in (though I do tend to reuse or recycle but its more likely to be used taking something to the office, a friend’s house or the trash).

How do you choose the clothes you buy? How important is workmanship, quality and price?

The post The Costs of Quality & American Made Cotton — Is it worth it? appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

One of the great things about the awesome network of online friends I have is that occasionally, out of nowhere, I get a photo tweeted or Facebooked to me just because it makes them think about me and/or agriculture. I realize I’ve lost track of the bulk of these photos that clearly show the presence of  agriculture in our daily lives. I got the idea as I was walking through the mall today and saw a shirt that was somewhat like the one below that Amanda Sollman saw in Las Vegas this week (you can read about why she was there in this post on her blog). Amanda’s tweet was simple & to the point:

https://twitter.com/#!/sollmana/status/10151453385564160

Thanks Amanda for sharing the cotton message someone from Clemson University’s school of agriculture was wearing in Vegas! I hope to have more cotton & agriculture love from friends to share on my blog in the future as well. When posting to Twitter, I’ll use the #friendsphoto hashtag too… I’m thinking others who blog about rather specific areas may want to do this. Not only is it another way to amplify your message, but it’s fantastic to think about having a series of photos from various friends stacking up digitally!

The post Starting a New Series — Friend’s Photo — First One is from Amanda Sollman appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

In the past couple of years, I’ve heard more about denim being used as insulation for homes. The memories that are clearest for me are around old jeans being converted to an eco-friendly housing component as this part of the world focused on rebuilding New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina (the Dirty Laundry Tour of college campuses in 2006 working with Habitat for Humanity efforts).

I know some denim drives have been held to help increase awareness in this way of recycling old jeans and denim skirts in a doubly environmentally-friendly way! Why double environmentally?

1. The cotton garments don’t go into a landfill
2. They are used to make homes more energy efficient

I love the “Cotton. From Blue to Green.” campaign! So if this has been happening since 2006, why am I so excited? Well, because this week alone I’ve seen two household name companies — both Levi Strauss and The Gap — show their support for taking “Cotton. From Blue to Green.” I love this!

The Gap Offers to ‘Recycle Your Blues’

First, if you are going shopping this weekend or in the near future, consider going to The Gap. If you don’t want to go, at least check out this great video that creatively shows how they are involved in “Cotton. From Blue to Green.”

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zoxkvmayddk]

To get the details, you can see coverage of the announcement from the Sacramento Bee.

Levi Strauss Supporting Community Organizations

The announcement from Levi’s may not have the same creativity as The Gap’s video

Levi Strauss & Co. Creates a $100,0000 Denim Insulation Fund to Help Community Organizations “Green” Their Buildings

SAN FRANCISCO (October 4, 2010) – To help community organizations become more sustainable, Levi Strauss & Co. today announced the launch of a $100,000 denim insulation fund, an initiative designed to reuse unwanted denim while keeping it out of landfills. The company will provide grants to organizations currently undergoing construction projects to offset the cost difference of using recycled denim insulation instead of conventional insulation.

“Denim is a staple in nearly everyone’s wardrobe, but it shouldn’t be a staple in our landfills,” said Jill Nash, vice president of corporate affairs, Levi Strauss & Co. “By encouraging our consumers to donate unwanted jeans and then promoting recycled denim as insulation in buildings, we can green our communities from the inside out and extend the lifecycle of every pair of jeans.”

The company will be accepting proposals from non-profit organizations from October 1 – November 21, 2010. This program is for U.S. based nonprofits organizations. Additional details about the program and how to submit a proposal can be found at https://www.levistrauss.com/sustainability/product/re-use.

via Levi Strauss & Co. Creates a $100,0000 Denim Insulation Fund to Help Community Organizations “Green” Their Buildings | Levi Strauss & Co..

I love that Levis will be directing money to green projects for charitable donations. I think that makes the double win grow exponentially!

Learning More about Cotton

Cotton is a natural fiber that comes from the Earth, it seems a perfect end to the product to go into another earth-friendly use.

If you want to know more about cotton farming, you may find this blog post about harvest of interest. You can also follow some folks in the cotton world on Twitter — I’d start with @Tweet4Cotton, @Supima and @CottonFarming.  You can also like the Cotton page and Gap on Facebook. And of course, I love tweeting about cotton enough that it’s in my name, @JPlovesCOTTON. 

The post Making Old Blue Jeans Green — Recycling for Warmth appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.