Fashion trends have one thing in common: Cotton

Last year the National Cotton Council of America (NCC) said that cotton growers in Missouri produced an average of 715 thousand bales of cotton on approximately 390,000 acres, supporting almost 8,000 jobs and generating more than $260 million in business revenue.

The majority of that business results in fashion, representing nearly 80 percent of the world's cotton crop, which is used to make the chic clothing everyone sees in the shopping malls or commercials and buys.

If all of the cotton produced annually in the entire United States was used to make only blue jeans, it would make 5 billion pairs.

The fashion trends, the classics, in many cases all have one thing in common: cotton.

Fashion has always been prevalent through society but these days it is spreading like wildfire. So much in fact that Cotton Incorporated has dedicated an issue of their quarterly publication to Olympus Fashion Week in New York.

Farmers in Dunklin County have always known cotton as one of their main resources, keeping food on the table and clothes on their families' backs.

Cotton is not only doing those things for farmers but clothing every family in America, and not only clothing them but through beautiful design allowing them individuality and personal style.

It is exciting to think that the Dunklin County farming community as well as the state of Missouri is producing cotton that may be used in the designs being worn by models stomping down the catwalk during Fashion Week and may be seen on streets all over the United States and other countries.

Cotton Incorporated is a sponsor of Fashion Week and used its booth to promote an immediate tie to the runways. The company's trend forecasters have traveled the world looking for emerging trends and photographing them for reference. Selections of the photography are transferred to cotton fabric and hung in the booth. Transformed into an art gallery, the booth pays homage to the relationship between cotton and fashion.

Cotton is getting creative, and according to an article in the Cotton Incorporated publication, Lifestyle Monitor, from ruffles and embellishments to the "elegantly understated," fashion icons like Oscar de la Renta, Diesel, Calvin Klein, Zac Posen, and Christian Dior are creating collections for spring 2006 that focus on flow, fluidity and the many ways cotton remains king as fashion's most versatile fabric.

Lifestyle Monitor suggests that cotton is just getting started. Nature gives cotton its beauty, texture, and easy care, according to the publication, but scientist and engineers from various disciplines are working closely together to keep cotton current with manufacturing, retail and consumer expectations by developing high-tech ways that ensure that the resource remains "the fabric of our lives" through the 21st century and beyond.