Baby clothing is sold with a lot of reassuring words on it. Natural. Pure. Eco. Skin-friendly. Almost none of those words mean anything you can check.
GOTS is the exception. It stands for the Global Organic Textile Standard, and unlike the soft language on a swing tag, it’s an independently audited certification with a licence number you can look up. Here’s what it actually covers, what the two different GOTS labels mean, and what any of it has to do with your baby’s skin.
What GOTS is
GOTS is a certification for textiles made from organic fibres. What makes it unusual is its scope: it doesn’t just certify the cotton in the field, it follows that cotton the whole way to the finished garment. Spinning, knitting, dyeing, printing, sewing, packing — every operator in that chain has to be certified for the final product to carry the label.
That matters because organic farming on its own doesn’t tell you much about what happened afterwards. Organically grown cotton can still be bleached with chlorine, dyed with restricted chemicals and finished with formaldehyde. GOTS closes that gap.
The four things GOTS audits
Broadly, certification covers four areas.
The farming. Fibre must come from certified organic agriculture: no synthetic pesticides, no synthetic fertilisers and no genetically modified seed.
The chemistry. There is a restricted list for every input used in processing — dyes, inks, auxiliaries, finishes. Chlorine bleach, formaldehyde finishes, and azo dyes that can release harmful aromatic amines are all out. Wastewater from wet processing has to be treated.
The labour standards. Based on International Labour Organization conventions: no child labour, no forced labour, safe and hygienic working conditions, freedom of association, non-discrimination, reasonable hours, and wages that meet the legal or industry minimum. This is the part most people don’t realise is in there.
The chain of custody. Certified operators at every stage, with documentation that lets an auditor trace a finished garment back through the supply chain. It’s what stops certified and uncertified cotton being quietly mixed.
Certification is renewed annually and involves on-site inspection by an accredited third-party body — not a self-assessment.
The two GOTS labels: 95% and 70%
This is the most useful thing to know when you’re comparing products, because both grades are legitimately “GOTS certified” and they are not the same.
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95%+ Labelled “Organic”
At least 95% certified organic fibre. The remaining 5% is tightly restricted, and is typically something functional like the elastane in a cuff.
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70%+ Labelled “Made with organic”
At least 70% certified organic fibre. The other 30% still has to meet the standard’s requirements, but it’s a meaningfully lower bar.
A genuine GOTS product carries the label grade, the name of the certifying body and a licence number. If a product says “GOTS” with no grade and no number, that’s worth a question.
What it means for your baby’s skin
The honest answer is that GOTS is not a medical claim, and no fabric will treat a skin condition. What it does is reduce what’s in the fabric in the first place.
Babies are more exposed to whatever is in their clothing than adults are. Their skin barrier is thinner and still developing in the first year, their surface area is large relative to their body weight, and they’re in fabric against bare skin around the clock — often with the same fabric near their mouth.
Because GOTS restricts the chemistry through processing rather than only testing the end product, the finished cotton has been kept away from a long list of substances associated with skin irritation and sensitisation: formaldehyde-based wrinkle finishes, chlorine bleach residues, certain azo dyes, heavy-metal-based pigments. For a baby with reactive or eczema-prone skin, fewer residues and a softer, longer-staple fibre is a sensible starting point — alongside the usual advice about detergent, avoiding fabric softener and rinsing thoroughly, which often matters just as much as the fabric.
What “eco cotton” and “natural” don’t mean
For contrast, here’s what you can’t rely on.
- “Eco”, “conscious”, “natural”, “pure cotton”
- Unregulated marketing terms with no audit behind them. “Pure cotton” simply means the fibre is cotton.
- “Organic cotton” with no certification named
- Possibly true, but nothing has verified it and nothing covers what happened during processing.
- Better Cotton (BCI)
- A legitimate programme aimed at improving conventional cotton farming practices, but it is not organic certification and doesn’t restrict processing chemistry the way GOTS does.
- OEKO-TEX Standard 100
- Useful and rigorous, but a different thing: it tests the finished textile for harmful substances. It says nothing about whether the fibre was organically grown or how the workers who made it were treated.
How to check a certificate yourself
GOTS maintains a public database of certified suppliers. If a brand publishes its licence number or names its certifier, you can search it and see the certificate, its scope and its expiry date. It takes about a minute, and it’s the difference between a claim and a verified one.
Where our cotton comes from
Everything we make is 100% GOTS certified organic cotton, grown and made up in Gujarat, India. Keeping the growing, spinning and making in one region shortens the chain, which makes it easier to certify honestly and easier for us to know who is making our clothes and under what conditions.
That’s the same reasoning behind the rest of what we do — designing pieces built to be handed down rather than replaced, and running our own resale route so they get a second life.
Common questions
Is GOTS certified the same as organic?
GOTS is stricter. “Organic” on its own refers to how the fibre was farmed. GOTS covers the farming plus the processing chemistry, the labour standards and the traceability of the whole chain.
Does GOTS mean there are no dyes?
No. GOTS-certified fabric can be dyed and printed — it just has to use approved, low-impact dyes and inks that meet the standard’s toxicity and biodegradability requirements. Undyed doesn’t automatically mean safer, and certified colour is not a compromise.
Is GOTS cotton worth paying more for?
It costs more because organic farming yields less per hectare, certified processing is more expensive, and the audits themselves have a cost. Whether that’s worth it depends on what you’re buying — for something worn against a baby’s skin every day and likely to be passed on to a second or third child, most parents who try it decide it is.
Every Lucy & Sam piece is made from 100% GOTS certified organic cotton, in one cut per size, from 0–3 months to 5–6 years.
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