Organic cotton clothing can help insure and maintain healthy skin for youngsters and is better for the environment than traditional attire. Simply Chickie, of Newport, Rhode Island, offers off-white onesies, hats, bibs, T-shirts and swaddling blankets made of Global Organic Textile Standard-certified cotton for boys and girls from newborn to 6T toddlers, both online and at boutique retailers.

“I create the graphics and print them on pre-made organic cotton blanks that are sewn in the USA in the Northeast,” says President Gwendolyn Gardner, who decided to create her business after being diagnosed with breast cancer and finding out that she was pregnant during the same week in August 2004. “I started thinking about what I put in my body and what I put on it,” recalls the former longtime school teacher. “I was going to do everything in my power to ensure my little girl was as safe as possible.”

Children’s skin is thinner and thus more susceptible to anything touching it. Synthetic fertilizers are not used on organic cotton crops; instead, crop rotation is favored, which increases the organic matter in the soil. Weeds are removed and controlled by hand and by hoeing. Pest control is achieved with natural predators, using beneficial insects, and certain trap crops which lure insects away.

Producing organic cotton is far kinder to the soil as it’s a rotation crop that preserves more soil nutrients, and most organic cotton is rain-fed and not irrigated.