The fibre

About Suvin

India bred one of the finest cottons in the world. Most Indians have never heard of it.

Coimbatore, 1974

Ask someone to name a great cotton

They’ll say Egyptian. If they know their shirts, perhaps Sea Island or Pima. Almost nobody says Suvin.

Yet in 1974, at a cotton research station in Coimbatore, Indian breeders crossed a home-grown variety, Sujata, with St Vincent, a Sea Island cotton from the West Indies. What came out was Suvin: a fibre so long and so fine that, on release, it was rated the equal of Giza 45, the best cotton Egypt had to sell.

Fifty years on, it still holds its own against the most famous names in cotton.

Suvin Comparison - Length connotes fibre length (mm), thickness connotes fineness (mic) of fibreEach strand drawn to its fibre length · thinner strand, finer fibre

SuvinTamil Nadu, India

39 mm2.9–3.3 mic

Sea IslandCaribbean

36–37 mm2.8–3.4 mic

Giza 45Nile Delta, Egypt

35–36 mm2.9 mic

Supima / PimaUnited States

36 mm3.5–4.9 mic

Ordinary cottonEverywhere else

26–28 mm4.0–4.9 mic

The lower the micronaire (mic), the finer the fibre. Source: ICAR-CIRCOT, Albini Yarns, USDA classing. Measurement conventions vary between origins.

Tamil Nadu, today

So why haven’t you heard of it?

Because Suvin is a difficult crop to love. It stays in the ground for around 225 days, against roughly 160 for ordinary hybrid cotton. It needs steady water, it is vulnerable to pests, and it gives fewer kilos per acre. A machine would break a staple this long, so every boll is picked by hand.

When hardier Bt hybrids arrived in the early 2000s, farmers did what any of us would do. They planted the crop that paid.

40,000Bales of Suvin a year, in the 1980s

≈1,500Bales a year today

≈12Trucks would carry India’s entire harvest

Most of it never stays here

Japanese mills have bought Suvin for decades, because they know exactly what it is. Meanwhile, India imports most of the extra-long-staple cotton its own fine shirts are made from. The best shirt in an Indian store is quite likely woven from cotton grown in Arizona or the Nile Delta.

It’s a familiar story. Something world-class, made here, that we simply never got around to telling anyone about.

Giza 45 and Sea Island have spent a century being famous. Suvin has spent fifty years being overlooked.

Picked by hand, in Tamil Nadu

Why we chose it

We didn’t set out to champion a cause. We set out to make one white shirt as well as it can be made, and a shirt is only ever as good as the fibre it starts with.

Of all the great cottons, the best one for the job was growing in Tamil Nadu. So we secured a single run of Suvin, had it spun into 120s two-ply yarn and woven into one cloth. There won’t be much of it, because there isn’t much Suvin.

We chose it because it is the finest fibre we could find for a shirt. That it happens to be Indian is simply the part of the story we enjoy telling most.