All Sewn Up
"Farming organic, GMO-free cotton is not for the faint of heart. It can be back breaking work to tend a field without synthetic pesticides to control weeds, and sourcing organic seed can be challenging. "There's a dearth of organic cotton seed on the planet," says Natalie Chanin, who in 2012 worked with friends at fashion company Billy Reid to raise a test plot of organic cotton near their mutual hometown of Florence, Alabama. Their goal was simple, yet daunting: to explore the viability of growing organic cotton locally."