After years working to establish an organic and sustainable supply chain, Alabama Chanin partners with designer Billy Reid to produce grown-to-sewn, organic cotton garments in northwest Alabama. Organic cottonseed is sourced with assistance from Kelly Pepper of the Texas Organic Cotton Marketing Cooperative; seven acres of land is acquired with assistance from K.P. and Katy McNeill, then-partners at Billy Reid; and local farmers, Lisa and Jimmy Lentz, oversee the project. Volunteers from the community and from Birmingham-based Jim ‘N Nick’s BBQ restaurant come together for a “picking party,” in the fall of 2012, yielding 746 pounds of organic cotton. The cotton is ginned locally in Lauderdale County and goes to a 100-year-old mill in North Carolina for spinning and knitting in the summer of 2013 before being sewn into limited-edition items at The Factory. The collaboration launches in fall of 2014.
Rinne Allen documents the picking days and an article runs in T Magazine.
Learn more about Rinne here.
Slide 1: Rinne Allen’s Field to Fiber exhibition chronicling the Organic Cotton Project, Project Threadways Symposium at The Factory, 2019, photograph by Rinne Allen
Slide 2: Picking day at the organic cotton field in northwest Alabama, 2012, photograph by Rinne Allen
Slide 3: Volunteers picking organic cotton at the picking day in northwest Alabama, 2012, photograph by Rinne Allen
Slide 4: Warehouse of conventional cotton bales at Scruggs & Vaden Gin in northwest Alabama, 2012, photograph by Erin Dailey
Slide 5: Organic cotton being baled at Scruggs & Vaden Gin in northwest Alabama, 2012, photograph by Erin Dailey
Slide 6: Organic cotton bales, waiting to be spun into yarn at a 100-year-old mill in North Carolina, 2013, photograph by Rinne Allen
Slide 7: Organic cotton being spun into yarn at a 100-year-old mill in North Carolina, 2013, photograph by Rinne Allen
Slide 8–9: Cones of organic cotton yarn at a 100-year-old mill in North Carolina, 2013, photograph by Rinne Allen
Slide 10: Organic cotton yarn set up on machine to be knit into jersey fabric, 2013, photograph by Rinne Allen
Slide 11: Bolt of knit organic cotton fabric at the North Carolina knitting mill, 2013, photograph by Rinne Allen
Slide 12: Organic cotton thread in Building 14 used to sew the Alabama Chanin and Billy Reid collaboration products, 2014, photograph by Rinne Allen
Slide 13: A limited-edition t-shirt being sewn in Alabama Chanin’s Building 14, 2014, photograph by Rinne Allen