Most everyone has a favorite pair of jeans. They fit great, look good and, most importantly, they are comfortable.

But those jeans have one shortcoming if you’ve ever ridden a horse in the rain, slogged through snow to fill the cattle trough or scouted a cotton or grain field on a dewy summer morning.

They tend to get wet. Soggy, even. And every ounce of comfort ever enjoyed with that particular pair of pants quickly becomes a memory.

Wouldn’t it be great if your favorite pair of jeans could also be waterproof? They now can, thanks to a newly developed cotton product from Cotton Incorporated that the company calls the Storm Denim and Storm Cotton technologies.

Cotton Inc., funded by growers to promote uses for cotton, showcased the products at the recent Beltwide Cotton Conference in New Orleans.

Mark Messura, the company’s executive vice president of the global product supply chain, was there to demonstrate.

“Storm Denim and Storm Cotton technology is essentially taking cotton products, such as denim jeans or a cotton pullover, and making them water-repellent,” Messura said.

“The real ingenuity behind these technologies is that they’re not only water-repellent, they’re breathable, which means you get the comfort of wearing cottonthe softness, the breathability of the cotton fabricat the same time you get the water-repellent feature.”

Staying dry, cool

That breathability of cotton is one of the biggest selling points of the new technology, Messura said. 

He cited a typical raincoat, used to ward off the elements: You might stay dry, but you’ll be hot.

“That’s one of the things we’ve seen with a lot of outerwear,” he said. “Typically, they are made with synthetics. They are coated in such a way that you might as well be wrapped in plastic. You’re waterproof, but absolutely not comfortable.”

So scientists at Cotton Inc.’s Textile Research Division —- using research money producers pay with each bale of cotton sold — set about coming up with solutions. 

The origin of the work on Storm Denim technology began several years ago as a project to develop a water-repellent cotton canvas fabric, Messura said.

Cotton had always had a small share in the outerwear category, so the company began looking for ways to help cotton compete. 

“Because of the importance of the denim market and research that we conducted with consumers, we knew consumers loved denim, but they also felt that when denim got wet it became very uncomfortable and heavy,” he said.

Once Storm Denim helped revolutionize the denim market, it wasn’t long before scientists realized they could apply similar technologies to other, non-denim cotton products, and Storm Cotton was born.

Today, some of the top names in outerwear are making use of it, including such brands as Eddie Bauer, Harley Davidson and Carhartt. 

Denim accounts for nearly one-third of the apparel market in the U.S., with jeans representing about 80 percent.

More than half of the nation’s cotton is grown here in Texas. It’s roughly a $2.1 billion crop annually in the state, second only to beef cattle. So it’s a safe bet farmers funded the bulk of the waterproofing technologies.

For more information, visit the Web site at www.cottoninc.com/Storm-Cotton.

Bobby Horecka lives in China Spring with his wife and three children. He writes for the Texas Farm Bureau’s print publications, online news service and video projects.