Bio is the cotton that unites the qualities of length, resistance and evenness of the fibres of Gossypium barbadense – the botanical name of Peruvian Pima cotton – with the strength of a message that connects the secrets of a great past to the beauty of a yarn created for a long future.

The naturally coloured cotton is cultivated without the use of pesticides or other chemical products as harmful insects and weeds are controlled using biocontrol agents. No synthetic substances, chemical softeners or dyes are used for the processing of the tufts: their delicate colours are completely natural and produced organically in a “drug-free” environment.

 

Cotton coming from an ancient past 
Lima, 1971: the National Anthropology Museum. A young American university student, James M. Vreeland, examines a piece of pre-Inca fabric under a microscope. Chance or destiny?The fabric presented some small dark-brown pigmentation: cotton fibres. They did not seem dyed, but the answer of the Establishment was categorical: they must have been dyed because cotton is always white.

James continued his research: in 1982 he discovered a series of six pieces of fabric during a dig at the archaeological site on the northern Peruvian coast, dated between 3100 and 1300 BC: the fibres, were undoubtedly “born” brown. Vreeland proceeded to research archives and documents, exhibits and ethnographic, botanic and archaeological evidence. He visited the university of Trujillo, where he met the professor of anthropology, one of the Mochic people who had always inhabited the area. And the confirmation was unequivocal: “l’algodòn paìs” – the native Peruvian cotton – was once naturally coloured in 5 shades (cream, beige, brown, sage and mauve).
 

Naturally coloured Peruvian cotton was grown until 1930, when industrial reasons led to a preference for hybrid and white plants, which were better able to satisfy production requirements. The government consequently ordered the destruction of the old fields in order to prevent pollination from spoiling the white tufts that by that time were growing in regular rows. By the end of the 1980s, just a few algodòn paìs seeds still remained in the museums.