ON & BEYOND

Finding Sea Island cotton on women’s clothing made me raise an eyebrow only because I refer Sea Island Cotton to the classic mens fashion upper-tier material for oxford connoisseurs connaisseurs (that’s the REAL french way of writing it, dictionary.com doesn’t believe me). It’s kind of like seeing lace on a men’s piece. Nevertheless, for those who know (skip to paragraph 2) and for those who don’t; Sea Island Cotton is a high quality fiber produced in the tidewater of Georgia and South Carolina and their surrounding sea islands. While this rare plant is no longer harvested in the United States due to an outbreak of the boll weevil in the 1920′s, climate changes making it impossible for the plants to grow and land development which changed the typography of those areas, The British Ministry managed to salvage the production of this cotton by founding West Indian Sea Island Cotton Association (WISICA) in 1932.

And even though, according to a recently published, exhaustively researched book called The Story of Sea Island Cotton, there is no such thing as authentic “sea island cotton” anymore, Let’s give the WISICA a pass and not pose as purists about this whole thing. So, if you like a girl who is fascinated by men’s fashion, you should buy her a Sea Island Cotton Oxford shirt by Makié from Lark.