Clothing Definitions — definitions of garments and clothing terms from Apparel Search
Organic clothing is clothing made from materials that are raised or grown without the use of chemicals in the form of pesticides, herbicides or other chemicals. Many retailers market organic clothing ranges whose finished garments still involve chemicals, from dyes to bleaches and treatments used in transport over thousands of miles from manufacture in places such as India and China. Authentic organic fabrics and clothing help the environment in several direct ways, and current standards and requirements for labelling and marketing organic materials should be checked with government sources. Organic clothing is also referred to as green clothing or green fashion.
Many clothing retailers market organic clothing ranges that contain many chemicals from dyes to bleaches and other chemicals to aid transportation many thousands of miles from their manufacture in places such as India and China. We suggest you contact your government for the most current standards and requirements regarding labeling and marketing of organic materials. Authentic organic fabrics and clothing can help the environment in a number of ways.
Organic clothing is also often referred to as Green Clothing or Green Fashion.
Women's Organic Clothing Guide
| The above article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/organic_clothing). 1/10/08 Modified by Apparel Search. |
The word organic describes how the raw material was produced, and clothing passes through many hands between field and rail, so the claim needs reading stage by stage. At the fibre stage the rules are clearest: organic cotton and other organic fibres are grown without synthetic pesticides, herbicides or fertilisers, and animal fibres come from animals raised without routine chemical treatments. At the fabric stage the picture widens, because yarn must still be woven or knitted, dyed, bleached, softened and made crease- or shrink-resistant, and each of those wet processes can be done with gentler chemistry or with conventional chemistry. A garment can therefore honestly contain certified organic fibre and still have been dyed and finished conventionally, which is why labels distinguish between a garment made from organic fibre and one certified organic through every stage.
Distance is the third stage. Much organic fibre is grown and made up in countries such as India and China and shipped many thousands of miles to its market, and long transport brings its own treatments and footprint, from fumigation and mothproofing in transit to the fuel of the journey itself. None of that cancels the benefit of chemical-free growing, no farm chemicals manufactured, no residues entering soil and water, no chemical exposure for the people finishing the fabric, and nothing chemical returned to the earth when the garment is landfilled, but it does mean the careful buyer reads the full label rather than the front-of-garment claim.
Because standards and labelling rules differ between countries and change over time, the reliable check is the current government standard for the market where the clothing is sold, together with the certification named on the label and the certifying body behind it. In the wardrobe, organic clothing needs no special handling beyond its fibre type: organic cotton washes like cotton, takes dye in the same way, and wears at the same rate. Its premium price reflects lower yields and certified handling at each stage rather than different performance, and its value is environmental and occupational, cleaner fields, water and finishing rooms, rather than a difference felt on the skin, though wearers with sensitive skin often prefer fibre that carries no finishing residues against them through the day.
Organic clothing is clothing made from materials raised or grown without the use of chemicals such as pesticides and herbicides. The term is also used as green clothing or green fashion, and organic cotton is the most common fibre sold under it.
The fibre may be grown without chemicals while later stages still use them: dyes, bleaches and other chemicals can enter in finishing, and further treatments may be used to aid transport over many thousands of miles from where the clothing is manufactured.
With authentic organic fabric, manufacture of farm chemicals is not required, chemical residues are not entered accidentally into the environment, people and animals are not exposed to chemicals when the fabric is finished, and chemicals are not returned to the earth in landfill or into the recycling process.