Open your wardrobe and you will find most of the garments you possess are made of cotton in one form or the other - whether dyed, blended with other fiber, or plain. Cotton is essentially the backbone of the fashion industry. A staple fiber, cotton cultivation is a tale as old as time.
Before we dive into the dates and the timeline of cotton history, let’s understand what this yarn actually is.
What is cotton?
Cotton is a staple fiber derived from the pods of the cotton plant belonging to the Gossypium genus. Since it is a natural fiber, the main component is cellulose. The cotton plant is a shrub that requires a warm and humid climate to thrive, with each pod containing 25-30 seeds. Cotton fluff is picked from these pods and later spun to form long filament yarns for weaving and knitting purposes.
Types of cotton?
A widely cultivated species, there are more than 25 varieties of this plant, however, commercially there are five native types of cotton grown around the world :
• Egyptian cotton.
• Sea Island cotton.
• American Pima cotton.
• Asiatic cotton.
• American Upland cotton
Egyptian cotton is considered the finest variety, and possesses a ‘sheen’ or lustre to it, while American upland cotton is among the most widely used commercially viable cotton varieties.
Origins of the cotton plant
The word “ cotton” is derived from the Arabic term “ Quton”. The origin of this fiber remains a matter of confusion since no written history indicates its initial use, however, the earliest traces of cotton framing were found in the Indus valley civilization of the third Millennium BC.
Traces of cotton textiles have even been found in the caves of Mexico estimated to be more than 7000 years old, documents from Egypt indicate that cotton was in fact being cultivated, spun, and woven into fabrics around 3000 years BC.
Arab traders began selling the spun cotton fabrics to Europe in 800 AD, thus forming a trade route known as “the silk route”. All around the globe cotton fragments and traces have been discovered, and it is believed that cotton cultivation was prevalent in the Bahamas Islands in 1492 even before Columbus found America.
How cotton was spun into our lives?
All around global Agri history, cotton was being cultivated and worn. Mechanical spinning devices were discovered in the excavations but as times changed, all the processes saw advancements.
The first known device that played a major role in cotton cultivation - the cotton gin was invented in India in the thirteenth century, this device made cotton farming easier and faster, acting as a catalyst in implanting cotton as the most widely used textile of the modern world.
Times changed, the industrial revolution saw an onset of technologically savvy machinery which made production easier and faster - Spinning Jeni, spinning frames, and spinning mules were then introduced. Giving way to the first machine-spun cotton in 1730 in England.
But, it was the American Eli Whitney’s patent of the mechanical cotton gin which backed cotton in being the backbone of the growing textile industry. This simple device which would separate cotton seeds and the cotton fluff from the bales would do the work of 600 hours in 12 and help fast-paced production in the West.
How cotton is made?
The process of moulding cotton into the fabric that we know starts from picking cotton pods then ginning and processing. The first step to production is the removal of impurities with help of the Gin, here the major by-products are lint, seeds, and cotton fluff. Next comes the classing or sorting of these fibers by length, color, percentage of purity among other factors.
Once the raw cotton is ready, comes the blending process, where these short filaments are blended to form bales or piles to go onto further processing. Next comes the carding process, where all these fibers are blended and pulled to form a singular long filament called the sliver.
The sliver is then pulled and blended in the drawing process where the sliver is then given more evenness. Post drawing, the sliver is combed to align the fibers in a process called combing. After the combing process, the sliver is pulled to form thinner ropes in a process trimmed as roving. After the cotton yarn is cleaned, pulled, and combed, it is ready to be spun into threads using one among many sinning processes like air spinning, rotor spinning, or ring spinning.
Largest cotton producers in the world
Owing to the climatic conditions, India and China are among the highest cotton-producing nations in the world.
The data below depicts the highest cotton-producing countries respective to thousand metric tons per country:
India - 5770
USA - 3999
China - 3500
Brazil - 2785
Pakistan - 1655
Future of the cotton industry
Cotton is among the most widely used products worldwide, the production of which is high paced and thus generates huge amounts of waste and by-products, moreover, over the years, eminent use of chemicals in its cultivation has given rise to a more conscious crowd.
More and more industries are investing their time and resources into sustainable production processes.
Sustainable cotton is at the forefront of conversations, sustainable cotton simply means, a fabric made from cotton grown using sustainable techniques - negligible use of chemicals while farming, reducing the number of toxins released in the environment while the processing and production, and making made to last products to reduce waste post use.
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