Soft + Comfort = Cotton.

Chambray and denim are really French imports.

Linen is made from the flax plant, while cotton comes from the cotton plant.

Cotton seersucker (a firmly woven cloth with parallel flat and puckered stripes) is considered a traditional summer fabric. This is because this crisp, cool fabric does not show...

Terry cloth towels are very absorbent because they are usually made with a looped pile where the loops act like very small sponges. A looped pile can also withstand the strain o...

Cotton knit sweaters and tee-shirts should be rolled and placed in a suitcase to prevent wrinkling.

Khaki is derived from a Hindu word that means "dust color."

One of the earliest prototypes for the T-shirt dates back to 1880, when sailors in the U.S. Navy wore an elbow and hip length undershirt which when laid out on flat surface rese...

Cotton was originally grown in several different colors, including brown, rust, and even light purple.

The word "cotton" is an English version of the Arabic "kutun," a generic term for fancy fabric. However, one of cotton's original popular names was "vegetable wool."

Cotton seeds are tough enough to survive travel across oceans on the wind.

Cotton is grown globally more than any other non-edible crop.

Cottonseed oil is cholesterol-free.

The fibre from one 227kg cotton bale can produce 215 pairs of jeans, 250 single bed sheets, 750 shirts, 1,200 t-shirts, 2,100 pairs of boxer shorts, 3,000 nappies, 4,300 pairs o...

Sheer cotton muslin, woven in ancient India, was so fine that 73 yards of it weighed one pound!

In ancient Egypt, only the High Priest was allowed to wear a cotton garment.

Eli Whitney's cotton gin wasn't actually a new idea. The "Charka," invented in India 3,500 years earlier, was great at ginning long staple cotton but ineffective on the short st...

Mills in Lancashire, England exported 7,000,000,000 yards of cotton fabric in 1913. That's an amazing 221.97 yards per second!

Home / Generic Cotton Education

Generic Cotton Education

Cotton Council International (CCI) is a US-based non-profit organization that promotes generic cotton fabric in India. It runs a ‘Generic Cotton Education’ program, which strives to increase the demand among end-consumers for products made from 100% cotton so that retailers, manufacturers and spinners could be encouraged to produce a higher percentage of 100% cotton products to meet this consumer demand.

CCI had launched the campaign in India in 2003 under the Cotton Gold Alliance (CGA) program. The CGA program was launched at the trade level in October 2002 and at the consumer level in May 2003 under the "New Face of Cotton" campaign. 2006 onwards there was a strategic shift in the program towards generic cotton education aimed at consumers and media. The CGA program was renamed "Generic Cotton Education Promotion in India", however the objective of the project remains the same.

CCI runs this program at various levels like at consumer level, at industry level and even among the media. For this, CCI has successfully collaborated with leading fashion designers, industry bodies, bollywood celebrities, media and design students to spread their message.

Cotton Council International has initiated very focused marketing activities across metros and Tier II cities. In order to promote cotton, CCI has carried out a number of activities. Design competitions in association with NIFT during their annual fest Spectrum in 2007 and 2008 were carried out. The ‘Cool with Cotton carnival’, initiated by CCI, is in its 3rd year now, though this year it was titled ‘Vote for Cotton’. The carnival involves mall promotions and road shows through which awareness about cotton and its fashionable aspects is created directly among the end consumers. This year too, CCI tied up with bollywood celebrities Prachi Desai, Minissha Lamba and Diya Mirza to promote cotton as a fashionable and trendy fabric. Another activity that CCI regularly does is organizing media awareness workshops during which they collaborate with some reputed designers and famous models who make a small fashion presentation for the media. Last year, CCI had also organized a cotton theme party, for which CCI had associated with the famous designer duo of Meera and Muzzaffar Ali of Kotwara Studio. It was titled as ‘Romance of Cotton’ and included a beautiful cotton fashion show with the garments being design exclusively by Meera and Muzzaffar Ali. This gave an opportunity of the stakeholders of both the fashion and textiles industry to come together and share the same platform.

In the current campaign, CCI decided to get more aggressive and reach out to a large audience and associate with not only established designers, but also with the budding fashion designers of the country. With this vision in mind, CCI launched Let’s Design, a design based reality show which was featured on ZOOM. The winner and 1st and 2nd runners-up of this reality show were awarded Rs. 1lac, Rs. 75000/- and Rs. 50000/- respectively. The winner also got an opportunity to go to United States of America to visit famous fashion designers and fashion houses. The 1st runner up of this competition got an opportunity to do an internship with WGSN at their Hong Kong office!

Another similar activity that CCI has done is called TEE-ZINE. It’s a pan-India T-shirt design competition for which they have received more than 6000 entries! The year 2009 has been named by United Nations as the International Year of Natural Fibers and this activity was carried out to celebrate this.

Also, CCI reaches out to the media too to generate awareness about the various benefits and uses of cotton. Cotton being a versatile attracts the media attention and also helps generate understanding of the fabric. Interesting talk points are highlighted with the media like cotton being environment friendly, Denim being a cotton fabric, information about wrinkle free cotton, cotton bed lenin, etc.

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