Apparently, Green is the new Black, or so this week of Green events at the London College of Fashion would lead us to believe.

The more fashion and mass apparel industries talk about sustainability in clothing, the closer we come to that tipping point when the mainstream public is aware of the importance of sustainable fibers and low-impact clothing. And, you and I know that a focus on sustainable and renewable fibers leads to cloth diapers.

I find it interesting that green fashion is debated at the same time that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is figuring out, OK, so what do we DO about it. There is style and substance all tied up in one tidy week.

I notice more publicity lately on eating organic food. This is not new, but more organic food in the news does mean more mainstream saturation. This is what has happened with global warming awareness. The fact of global warming is certainly not new, but enough people, organizations, businesses, and governments are now well informed about the facts that the way forward becomes more clear. Maybe the movement to encourage organic food will reach that same kind of educated saturation in time.

For now, we have the organic industry organization on a mission to encourage us to buy 10% organic food by 2010 — not a bad thing but definitely a movement with sellers in mind, making us not people who want to eat but just consumers. Means to profit. Others are encouraging us to consider clean food, too. The Environmental Working Group’s FoodNews.org is offering a list of which foods are most important to buy organic because USDA pesticide tests show they are most likely to have trace pesticides. Peaches, for example, had the highest pesticide load with a score of 100.

I look forward such a saturation of information on organic fibers that a mainstream audience will know the basic facts and the way forward to lower-impact clothing, including diapers, will be clear. Until then, keep talking about organics so we can reach that tipping point.

Ode Magazine has a beautifully photographed story this month on cotton in India — on conventional, pesticide-laden cotton in India. The farmer suicides continued at a rate of one every eight hours as the photographer was visiting. Expensive pesticides and genetically modified seeds (which mean they can’t save seed for planting next year) have meant soaring costs, leaving the farmers in debt they can’t overcome.

Add to this the rising cost of water, decreasing soil quality, health problems caused by chemical exposure and the absense of other jobs in the rural areas, and it’s easy to see why India’s farmers are desperate.

They don’t see any other way out. The situation is not better in other cotton growing countries.

At London Fashion Week a couple of weeks ago, Kathrine Hamnett (known for many slogan T-shirts in the 1980s) did not show a new collection. She showed a film on the impact of the global cotton industry’s pesticide use. The film is part of the Environmental Justice Foundation’s Pick Your Cotton Carefully campaign. Why whitewash cotton? The true of child labor, slavery, and health and environmental degradation is nasty.

• White Gold: The True Cost of Cotton – short film with Uzbekistan focus. (The You Tube link works better for me.)
• Pick Your Cotton Carefully PSA. Quick wake-up call to middle class.
• The Deadly Chemicals in Cotton. Report.

Cotton is a serious choice, not a pleasant way to make yourself feel good about your environmental choices. When you choose cotton, organic cotton is essential to the well being of other humans.

Pick your cotton carefully. Ode could only manage to list a couple of high-profile celebrity designers using clean cotton. You can find many more organic sources than that. Ask for organic cotton. DEMAND organic cotton.

As Kathrine Hamnet said, “It’s not about choosing something else, it’s about choosing the right cotton.”

Most of us choose organic for more than just strictly environmental reasons. Most of us see the broader context of the choices we make. Most of us are concerned about fair labor from the field right through the supply chain to the store.

The new organic gorilla in the U.S. is, of course, Wal-Mart. Not only are they misrepresenting some of their products as organic (don’t they know what it means?), but they are still having trouble in the area of fair labor.

We still need to make our organic choices in context. Don’t be fooled by strictly economic choices that bring higher organic dollars. Do the companies you buy from embrace social justice?