Six years ago, David Basson got a phone call that most manufacturers can only dream about -- one from Walmart.

Basson, the CEO of Seattle-based Greensource Organic Clothing Company, had recently shipped an order of 200,000 yoga tops to Sam's Club, Walmart's warehouse club unit. At first, the Sam's Club buyer didn't see any particular reason why the organic tops would sell much better than the regular kind; she just felt that organic was a good place to be from an ecological standpoint. But when all 200,000 of the pieces flew off the shelves in three weeks, the pinstriped-trouser boys in Bentonville picked up the story. Then, they picked up the phone and called David Basson.

"Lee Scott [Walmart's CEO at the time] had his people call us and say, 'Come talk to me,'" Basson remembers now. So Basson and a few of his partners got on a plane and flew 1,627 miles to Bentonville, Ark., and did just that. Basson's company had been in business just five years, yet here he was in the executive conference room with one most powerful executives in the world. "We sat across from him and his honchos," the clothier remembers. "It was an interesting meeting."

And a fateful one. A few weeks later, Basson shipped Walmart its initial order of 800,000 organic cotton layettes (those baby jumpers that snap together). Then the Mart called again. This time came orders for organic bed sheets and organic towels. Soon, Macy's was interested too, and then Sears, and then Kohl's. Today, Greensource is the eighth largest maker of organic clothing on the planet, with revenues in excess of $50 million. And Basson says that with huge retailers finally catching on, it's only a matter of time before organic clothing (that is, cotton grown without any chemical fertilizers or pesticides) goes mainstream. "Consumers understand the issues," he says. "They want to take care of the planet. Once people get into it, they're not going to go back."

Words easily enough spoken by a man who makes organic clothing, right? But plenty of numbers suggest that Basson is onto something. Not long ago, the mere mention of organic apparel conjured images of Woodstock-era hippies clad in hemp belts and Birkenstocks, mashing up a fresh batch of granola. But such clichés -- if they were ever accurate -- are far from the reality now.

Between 2008 and last year, while recessionary cutbacks in household spending saw overall sales of apparel and domestic textiles drop by 7 percent, sales of organic cotton grew by double digits -- 35 percent to be exact -- according to the trade group Organic Exchange. In fact, organic cotton's annual growth rate has grown steadily for a decade now: 40 percent on average each year since 2001. Organic apparel is currently a business worth $4.3 billion; by next year, it's expected to hit $6 billion.

Granted, that's a mere stitch in the seam compared to the $188 billion of clothing sold in the U.S. last year. But skeptics who dismiss organic cotton as a special-interest curiosity might want to consider that not very long ago people were saying the same thing about organic foods. Back in 2000, organic edibles was a $6 billion business. Last year, Americans dropped $24 billion on it. "We're about 10 years behind the organic food movement," says LaRhea Pepper, an organic cotton farmer who works 500 acres outside of Lubbock, Texas. "I've been at this for 20 years and there were very few brands in the 1990s that were taking it seriously. Now, there are over 75 large brands and retailers doing it."

Pepper is correct. Most of the major names carrying organic apparel today have signed on since 2005 and now include not only the best-known labels (Levi's, Adidas, Nike) but the top retailers, too: H&M, Target, Nordstrom, Gap and, of course, Walmart. As Caterina Conti, evp of New York-based wholesale shirtmaker Anvil Knitwear, puts it, "In the last five years we've really seen a diligent switch, so you're really on target with this trend. The interest [in organic cotton] this year is overwhelming."

HAVING A BOLL

Seeing as organically grown cotton was worn the by likes of Jesus, Caesar and King Tut, why are so many major brands waking up to it only now? Again, there's a parallel to organic food. After years of consuming chemicals, more and more Americans are ready to return to natural things. According to a recent survey from AMP, well over half of American consumers now factor sustainability into their purchasing decisions, while a Capstrat/Public Policy survey last year showed that for one customer in 10 eco-friendliness is now the most important factor in choosing what brand to buy.

"[Based on what] our customer research indicated, it was difficult to miss what was going on in the market," says Michael Kobori, vp of social and environmental sustainability for Levi's, which introduced its "Eco" jeans -- made from 100 percent organic and recycled cotton -- four years ago. Gap stores began offering 100 percent organic cotton T-shirts in 2007, after "our customers show[ed] a real interest in responsibly produced products," according to a press release at the time. That same year, Adidas started offering Better Place, a line of "sustainable performance" products that includes recycled materials and organic cotton. "We see a demand for products which consist of environmentally sound materials," says Frank Henke, Adidas' director of social and environmental affairs.

Not that providing them is all that simple. First there's the Byzantine issue of sourcing enough organic cotton when most of the world's cotton farmers still use chemical fertilizers and pesticides (for the record, many major clothing brands contract with middleman stitchers like Anvil, which do the purchasing). Then there's the cost of organic cotton, which is moderately higher. Because, as Basson says, "you're going to pay about 20 percent premium just on the yarn," brands are faced with the Hobson's choice of either raising retail prices or cutting into their profit margins -- neither a very attractive option during these price-sensitive times.

Usually, brands will do some combination of both. The key, Basson says, "is volume and price. The consumer will pay a little more, but not a lot more. There's always a balance between what the customer will pay to support something they believe in." Adds Levi's' Kobori: "Organic cotton does cost more, but consumers are willing to pay for it if we deliver on expectations of style and quality."

In other words, while more consumers may be interested in organic clothing, getting them to pay for it hinges on the marketing -- explaining why organic matters and that the brand is offering organic as part of a larger commitment to the environment. "Customers are paying more attention," as Anvil's Conti says, "but [brands] have to explain to them why it's important."

Levi's, for instance, does exactly that. The brand's embrace of organic fiber is adjunct to a broader eco-friendly initiative that includes "Better Cotton," sold via in-store marketing components such as window displays and care tags that advise consumers to wash their jeans in cold water, line dry them and donate old pairs to charity to keep them out of landfills. "Communicating what Better Cotton is and how it's sustainable is very important," Kobori says.

Adidas, which also has a Better Cotton Initiative, takes similar pains to explain to consumers that it's doing the right thing by offering organics. "Did you ever ask yourself, what could I do to make the world a better place?" asks the green section of the brand's Web site. "Several product managers at Adidas asked themselves...From this, Adidas Better Place was born." Henke says that organic cotton is part of offering consumers "products they are really looking for." But he also concedes "the percentage of consumers interested in these types of products is still relatively small."

A STITCH IN TIME

And that's the strange thing behind the organic cotton movement. If demand for it is growing (but still modest) and money can be made (though it's tougher to do it), where is the compelling business argument for going organic now? The answer seems to rest in what brands anticipate from the market as opposed to what they're seeing at the moment. As Sandra Marquardt, spokesperson for the Organic Trade Association sees it, "Consumers weren't knocking on the door saying, 'I have to have an organic T-shirt!' A lot of this is [brands'] own corporate conscience. With the whole corporate social responsibility focus, companies are being driven in this direction, and I think this is a preemptive initiative."

Anvil's Conti agrees. She says that a convergence of factors -- concern over the planet, yes, but also the recent financial debacles on Wall Street-have caused companies justified concern over public scrutiny and, in turn, prompted many brands to make sure their houses are in order. That includes a strong social and environmental responsibility platform, and organic cotton is simply a part of that. "Credibility," Conti surmises, "is fundamental."

If Conti is correct, it would explain why some of the apparel brands adopting organic cotton are already heading off accusations of greenwashing before they're even being made. How? Not just by proving that the cotton being sold is organic (something called the Global Organic Textile Standard -- GOTS -- is considered the gold seal), but by showing them where it's from. A consumer who buys a shirt at Walmart made by Greensource, for example, will find a style number on the tag that he or she can then enter into an internal search engine at Greensourceorganic.com, which will show him exactly where and by whom it was grown, processed and finished. Adidas offers a similar traceability feature. "A lot of people out there get inundated by [green] information," Basson says. The clothing traceability feature, he says, affords the kind of eco-friendly assurances that other products simply do not.

THE FUTURE LOOMS

Which is not to say that all of these brands have fully committed to organic apparel. While some, such as Nike and Patagonia, were early and thorough converters, advocates such as Pepper complain that other brands are only "getting their toes wet" by offering organics on one shelf even as they sell the regular stuff on the other shelves. "I just went to a store in Minneapolis," complains Ronnie Cummins of the Organic Consumers Association. "They have a huge section on reducing your carbon footprint, and they had a few organic T-shirts. But most of their stuff is just regular cotton."

Another issue is the processing. Perhaps the biggest catch of so-called "organic" cotton is that while much of it might be organic coming out of the ground, it's then trucked off to finishing plants that plunge the fabric into vats of chlorine bleach and formaldehyde-based color dyes. It's the ecological equivalent of driving a Prius with the window rolled down so you can smoke a cigarette. Many brands, Pepper says, "haven't changed their dyes because of color fastness and other performance reasons, so this is a two-phased kind of thing."

But advocates agree that a gradual, flawed process is better than none, while brands point out that no transformation this huge can happen overnight. One thing's clear, though: It is happening. "In 10 years," Levi's' Kobori says, organic cotton "will be a requirement of consumers. And we're working now to get ahead of that."