The Sustainable Cotton Project, a nonprofit based in Davis, has helped almost two dozen cotton farmers penetrate the fashion industry by promoting California-grown BASIC cotton, a crop that's not quite organic but is farmed using techniques that reduce pesticide usage by as much as 73 percent. San Diego-based prAna recently snapped up hundreds of pounds of BASIC acala cotton for its "Homegrown T-Shirt," and American Apparel has committed to buying nearly half a million pounds, said Lynda Grose, a sustainable fashion design professor at California College of the Arts who helped broker the deals. Coral Rose, who spearheaded Wal-Mart's first purchase of organic yoga clothes in 2004 when she was a women's apparel buyer at Sams Club, said once companies start switching to natural fibers, it's only a matter of time before they start thinking about other sustainable design practices. Wal-Mart is now the biggest seller of organic cotton products worldwide. "It's a total mindset shift at the design level," said Rose, now a consultant based in Fayetteville, Ark. "It holds the designer accountable for their designs and their impacts." William Good CEO Nick Graham, a veteran designer who founded Joe Boxer in the 1980s, said the idea for his new company came to him as he wandered around a Goodwill store, thinking about all the used clothing that ends up in landfills. "I thought we could do an organic line, but then I thought that's just more stuff we'd be creating," Graham said. "It's the American way to say we need more growth, but what if we created an economy with everything we've already used once?" Santa Barbara-based Simple Shoes is promoting that concept as well with its ecoSNEAKS, a line of shoes and boots featuring treads made from recycled car tires. Still, analysts caution that until earth-friendly clothes come down in price, only a small group of consumers will think about their carbon footprint before they reach for their wallets. "We've gotten more people aware or interested in ecological fashion, but most of the world's still looking for cheaper, better, faster," said Marshal Cohen, a fashion industry analyst at the NPD Group. "The message will resonate, but it's going to take more time."
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