If plants have shaped fashion’s past, could they also hold the secret to its future?

In The Nature of Fashion, Carry Somers takes readers on an epic journey through the plant origins of what we wear — tracing how the fibers that clothe us have transformed landscapes, cultures, and economies. Told through intimate human stories, the book uncovers both the devastation and beauty interwoven through the history of textiles: the exploitation of land and labor, and the resilience of those who continue to work in rhythm with nature.

This excerpt tells one of those stories. When Yolanda Contreras and a small group of women in northern Peru set out to revive their ancestors’ colorful native cotton, they faced skepticism, government bans, and the daily strain of survival. Yet their determination grew into a movement that restored biodiversity, reclaimed cultural heritage, and redefined what sustainable fashion can mean.

The following is an excerpt from Carry Somers’s new book The Nature of Fashion (Chelsea Green Publishing, November 2025) and is printed with permission from the publisher.

Some called it courage, others said it was recklessness when Yolanda Contreras gave up her job at the chicken factory, especially since she had a young family to support. It all started with the group of women she passed on the way to work: two o’clock every Tuesday afternoon, always there, deep in discussion by the side of the road. For weeks, Yolanda only glanced at them in curiosity. Then one day, she summoned the nerve to ask what they were doing. That’s when she heard about their dream: to revive the native cotton their forebears once grew, the cotton that sprouted brown and beige, yellow and orange, lilac and green – and perhaps black and blue. The plant they called simply algodón El País: country cotton. Yolanda felt an invisible thread tug her back to her grandmother, who had made clothes from seeds passed down like heirlooms. Yet it wasn’t just nostalgia that convinced Yolanda to join them. Coloured cotton was an opportunity, a means of escaping the drudgery of the chicken factory where every dead bird was docked from your pay. Yolanda hung up her apron and joined their crusade.

There was only one obstacle with growing such cotton – well, two or three it eventually turned out. The most immediate was finding seeds. The women searched high and low throughout Mór-rope, scouring every ditch and hedgerow, combing their homes and fields. Eventually they found a handful of seeds buried in the fluff of mattresses and pillows, and a few forgotten plants clinging to life in the countryside. Starting with so little felt like an impossible task, particularly as Yolanda had no idea how to cultivate them. The region has a desert climate and, with no irrigation in her field, she brought water in by donkey, digging holes one by one and carefully filling them with seeds. Some plants grew, others withered and died. But turning this handful of seeds into a livelihood wasn’t the women’s only battle because their husbands weren’t exactly cheering them on either, grumbling that they shouldn’t have given up their day jobs so hastily. Still, they persevered.

Just as their efforts were taking root, literally and figuratively, the Ministry of Agriculture arrived with orders to destroy their entire crop. There was a law, they explained, prohibiting the cultivation of native cotton. The government sees cotton’s promise, but their field of vision is confined to the commercial pima variety, which only grows white. Those native colours might cross-contaminate, muddying its coveted whiteness, shortening the extra-long staple fibres or harbouring pests that could damage the lucrative crop. And they might not, Yolanda thought bitterly as months of backbreaking work went up in smoke. Well, perhaps not quite all, because each cotton boll produces numerous seeds and it wasn’t hard to find a few escaped handfuls. This native cotton, this country cotton, this cotton the government disparages is proving to be a plant so tough it will withstand all attempts to eliminate it. Yolanda’s anger solidified into determination. She would not let them extinguish biodiversity and cultural heritage in a single swipe. If the law required her to grow white cotton, then that’s what she would do. She planted a field of pure white pima cotton, just like the government wanted. And in the middle, she grew her country cotton, her coloured cotton, her cultural heritage, wrapped like a secret within a veneer of conformity.

The women tended their crops, harvesting, spinning, storing, anticipating the day the world would catch up. After eight years they grew tired of waiting and invited the technical coordinator from the Ministry to come and inspect their plants. To the government’s surprise, these women had been right all along: native coloured cotton posed no threat to the white variety after all. In truth, it had some distinct advantages. While its staple length is short, native cotton is naturally resistant to the pests that plague commercial varieties. It thrives with minimal maintenance, requiring no fertilisers or pesticides, and the bushes can be harvested for up to six years. Unlike the monoculture of pima, native cotton is often planted as hedgerows to protect other crops from foraging animals. The government reversed the ban. Then they went further, officially recognising native cotton as the genetic, ethnic and cultural heritage of Peru. Yolanda and the other women had done more than rescue five colours from the verge of extinction; they had woven their efforts into history, reclaiming their cotton as a national treasure.

As Yolanda tells me her story, she sits on a woven petate palm mat, a strap around her back suspending her loom between her body and a nearby tree. Her shuttle moves to and fro, weaving alternating stripes of beige, brown and white. A young boy sits in the shade of her loom, while a girl sidles up to lean on her grandmother’s shoulder, absorbing the craft. Not that this is surprising – they’ve been surrounded by coloured cotton since the day they were born. In their culture, this fibre is for more than weaving. When a baby is born, the father will bury the placenta while the mother bathes herself and her baby with purple cotton. Then she wraps a pillow or hat made from brown cotton around the newborn’s head – no other colour will do. This cushions the baby’s soft skull against the nocturnal hooting of the great horned owl, which could easily split it in two. As the child grows, a loop of cotton around the ankle will ease leg pain, while a wad of cotton soaked in alcohol soothes toothache and mouth ulcers, always burned after use. A compress for bites, a remedy for fright, it seems there’s nothing native cotton cannot do.

Today the women’s group that met on the roadside every Tuesday has grown into a movement, encompassing not just her community but twenty others besides. With the money she earns, Yolanda has sent one of her daughters to medical school, while another works beside her growing cotton. As Yolanda pushes her bobbin through the warp threads, pulling the batten towards her to tighten a strip of rich chestnut weft, her heritage comes alive on the loom. Sometimes she thinks back to life in the chicken factory. But not very often.