The Hands Before Ours: Who Makes Our Organic Baby Clothes

It is nearly nine and the washing is finally dry. You are folding on the sofa with one ear on the monitor, and the pile is almost entirely his: three bodysuits, two pairs of leggings, the singlet he practically lived in this week. You fold the smallest piece last, and your thumb catches the shoulder seam, the one that lets you get it over his head without a fight. For a second you just hold it. Somebody made this. Somebody sat at a machine and sewed a seam that small, and they will never know whose baby wears it.

We think about that more often than you would expect. Every piece we design passes through a long line of hands before it reaches yours, and almost none of those people will ever meet the child it was made for. This is a little about them.

Before it was cloth, it was somebody's season

Cotton begins in a field, and somebody is standing in it. Someone watched that crop through a wet month and a dry one, decided when to pick, and bent over the rows to do it by hand. By the time the fibre reaches a spinning mill it has already been a year of somebody's working life.

This is the part of the story that changed how we buy. Conventional cotton is one of the most heavily sprayed crops in the world, and the World Health Organization is blunt about who carries that risk: the people at highest risk of harm from pesticides are those who work directly with them, which is to say the growers, not the people who eventually wear the cloth. You can read WHO's own summary on pesticides and health if you want the detail.

So when we specify certified organic fibre, the first person it protects is not your baby. It is the woman who picked it, and the family who lives beside that field and drinks from the same water. Your baby's skin comes second. We have made peace with that order, because a garment that is gentle on one child and rough on somebody else's whole village is not actually gentle.

The stitch nobody notices

There is a knit we keep coming back to called pointelle, the one with the tiny deliberate openings running through it, soft and a little old fashioned, the sort of fabric that looks like it came out of a grandmother's drawer. Those openings are not a flaw, and they are not decoration added later. Somebody programmed a knitting machine to drop a stitch, hold it, and carry on, thousands of times, so that air could move through the cloth in Singapore's heat without the fabric losing its shape. Our Pointelle Long Sleeve Bodysuit exists because somebody on a factory floor is very good at something most parents will never think about once.

The opposite is also true. The Essential Singlet Bodysuit is the plainest thing we make and the hardest to make well. There is nowhere to hide on a plain piece. The envelope neck has to stretch over a head that does not yet hold itself up and then return to its shape, wash after wash, for a year. The domes have to line up for a parent working with one hand at four in the morning. Every one of those decisions is somebody's craft, and the measure of their skill is that you never notice it. You just reach for that singlet again, and again, and wonder why it is the one you keep washing.

Why we name the place

Designed in New Zealand, ethically made in India. It is on every product page we write, and we say it in that order on purpose, because the second half is the half most brands leave off.

Naming a country means very little on its own, which is why we work to the Global Organic Textile Standard rather than to our own word. GOTS does something unusual: it certifies every stage, from the fibre through to the finished garment, and it applies the same social criteria at each one. Safe and hygienic working conditions. No child labour and no forced labour. Freedom of association. Fair working hours and pay. Transaction certificates follow the material from one certified company to the next, so the claim can be traced rather than simply trusted. The key features of the standard are public, and worth five minutes if you have ever wanted something firmer than a brand's promise.

What that gives us is the right to speak about the people in our supply chain in the same tone we use about the prints we draw. We have written before about the quiet story behind every print we make, and the truth is that the print is the easy part. Anyone can draw a rabbit. Far fewer people can tell you who spun the yarn it is printed on, and under what roof, and whether that person was paid on time.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where are Burrow and Be clothes made?

Our pieces are designed in New Zealand and ethically made in India, in facilities working to the Global Organic Textile Standard. We name both because the design and the making are two different kinds of work, done by two different sets of people.

What does GOTS certification actually guarantee about the people who make the clothes?

GOTS sets social criteria at every processing stage, not only at the farm. These include safe and hygienic working conditions, a ban on child and forced labour, freedom of association and collective bargaining, and fair working hours and pay. Accredited certification bodies audit on site, and transaction certificates document the flow of material between certified companies.

Is organic cotton better for the people who grow it, or only for my baby?

Both, and the growers arguably more so. Organic cultivation excludes synthetic pesticides, and the people at greatest risk from those chemicals are the ones who handle and work around them daily. The benefit to your baby's skin is real, but it is not the only reason to choose the fibre.

How can I tell whether a baby brand is genuinely ethical?

Look for a certification that covers the whole chain rather than one stage, and check that the brand names its manufacturing country without being asked. Words like natural, pure or eco carry no audit behind them. A named standard and a stated country of manufacture are things somebody has had to verify.

Tonight the pile will be dry again, and you will fold it again, and the house will be quiet in that particular way it is only quiet after a baby has finally gone down. When your thumb catches that seam, there is a line of people standing behind it: someone in a field, someone at a spinning frame, someone who set a machine to drop a stitch so your son could sleep cool. You have not been caring for him alone this week. If you ever want to know who made a particular piece, or how, write to us. It is our favourite question to be asked.