Cotton black, cotton blue

Cotton Black, Cotton Blue: The lookthrough of the modern cotton and garment industry. Burkina Faso, Bangladesh and Slovenia.

My red dress, printed with tiny white and yellow flowers. Maybe the cotton was grown in Burkina Faso. Without ploughs, without tractor sprinklers, without combines and subsidies, with bad seeds. Maybe the fabric was woven in large dark and noisy halls where tedious work may have been done by children because their hands are tiny and skilful. Maybe it was coloured by men working in even darker and noisier places where the air - thick and full of poisonous gasses - glues itself to their skin, corroded with aggressive chemicals. Maybe it was made by a seamstress, maybe by a guy whose possessions are stacked in a small backpack that's hanging on a wall above his work station. Which is, at the same time, also his bedroom. But surely, the one who gave my dress a name, earned some substantial money along the way.