Color Grown Cotton: Fox Fibre
by on 04.18.05
Some cotton is naturally colored — it grows that way and does not need to be dyed. "Color grown" cotton has its roots in the ancient Americas. Weavers cultivated native white, tan, green, yellow, red, and brown colored cottons for thousands of years. However, the fiber qualities of the cotton was not suited to modern textile machines. Thus, today, most people only associate cotton with the color white.
During the 1990s color grown cotton was back in production, due to the efforts of Sally Fox, an inventor from California, who cultivated long fiber colored cotton, and created her own patented cotton called "Fox Fibre". Most Fox Fibre is grown organically (called Fox Fibre Colorganic), and requires minimal processing because it does not need to be dyed. It is used in a wide variety of products today, including clothing, bedding and furniture.
You can read more about Sally Fox here.
:: Fox Fibre available from Cottonfield.
[by Justin Thomas]
I thought Sally had blue cotton too. Or maybe that was monsanto. The athena mills site is down so I can't check. Sally Fox is also noted for having a utility patent for flame-resistant cottons (in additon to 4 other patent-equivelencies). She's another "overnight success story" that was 30 years in the making.
FYI: another peculiar factoid about colored cotton: it does _not_ fade. The colors grow richer and deeper with each washing. The earliest americans (of central america) cultivated at least 12 different colors.
Since I love to talk about cotton, I'll mention that Pima -the finest long staple cotton fiber in the world, is native to Guatemala and is still grown there but it is exported to India for processing -don't even get me started on the inefficiency of CA thread production and the politics of commodities conversion/value-added production leaving the area- and reimported to Guatemala for use in traditional weaving by local artisans.
I located an official link for Athena Mills since nothing from google worked but the one from Peacemaker community (http://www.peacemakercommunity.org/elements.htm?z=10)
did. The official home of FoxFibre® Cotton is http://www.foxfibre.com/ and is undergoing renovation. Commercial inquiries should be directed to info@foxfibre.com
Retail products (yarns, fabrics) can be seen at http://www.vreseis.com (Sally's name is Vreseis-Fox evidently)
Thanks Kathleen, Yeh, we'd noted some of your points before, when we were highlighting towels from Colorganic. It's my undertanding (and I'm a bit rusty on this) that Sally did indeed produce some sort of Blue, but that it never went commercial, even though she approached Levis to become involved.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2004/11/colorgrown_orga.php and
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2004/11/sneak_peek_at_e.php