THE COTTON EXPERIENCE

Where Black culture meets the past, present and future of cotton.

Created by Dominique Drakeford and designed + produced through her storytelling platform, Compost, Cotton & Cornrows.

Have you ever entered an entire world built around cotton … one you could see, touch, smell, hear, wear, learn from, participate in and even take home with you?

I'M BUILDING IT!

My name is Dominique Drakeford, and I’m a mother, an environmental justice educator, cultural strategist and storyteller who has spent more than a decade working across Black culture, sustainability, fashion and agriculture.

In 2027, I am working to bring THE COTTON EXPERIENCE to New York City: a first-of-its-kind, large scale, two day immersive world exploring cotton through Black culture, agriculture, fashion, art, history, technology and climate.

Part living museum, part cultural symposium and part participatory experience, it will invite audiences to journey from seed and soil to fiber, fashion and future through living cotton, contemporary art, archival storytelling, garments, film, music, textile practices, conversations, climate innovation and more.

(Think CultureCon meets The Met meets The Legacy Museum meets Lagos Fashion Week)

WHY COTTON?

Cotton generates more than $75 billion in global production value every year, yet Black communities historically and presently connected to the crop and who are carrying generations of agricultural knowledge, remain profoundly disconnected from its land, capital, infrastructure and economic power.

For many Black communities, cotton also remains inseparable from histories of enslavement. THE COTTON EXPERIENCE does not erase that history. It asks what becomes possible when our relationship to cotton is allowed to expand beyond that trauma.

By reconnecting ancestral knowledge with contemporary Black farming, design, science, innovation and entrepreneurship, cotton becomes a powerful lens for exploring reclamation, economic possibility and climate resilience: From healthy soil and biodiversity to natural fibers, circular design and equitable ownership.

A regenerative future must of course restore soil and fiber. But it must also regenerate relationships, knowledge, opportunity and economic power.

WHY ME?

THE COTTON EXPERIENCE is the culmination of more than a decade of my work.

I hold a master’s degree from NYU focused on sustainable entrepreneurship and fashion, was named a UC Riverside 40 Under 40 honoree, and my work and words have appeared in more than 30 publications, including Vogue, The New York Times, Forbes, Essence, ELLE and Vanity Fair. I’ve spoken and taught with institutions including MIT, Tuskegee University, University of Cambridge, Google, Apple and the CFDA.

From co-founding Sustainable Brooklyn, co-producing The Root Decolonizing the Sustainable Fashion Age , creating MelaninASS, to creatively directing The Black Farmers Project and building my storytelling platform Compost Cotton and Cornrows , my work has consistently asked how we reconnect fashion and sustainability to land, culture, labor and Black environmental knowledge.

I have witnessed generational cotton weaving and natural dye practices in Ghana, traced a Black-led cotton supply chain from Burkina Faso to the United States through the Compost, Cotton & Cornrows Heirloom Tee (in partnership with Seed2Shirt), grown cotton myself, and traveled through the South exploring the complicated histories and extraordinary possibilities held within this crop.

THE COTTON EXPERIENCE brings all of these threads together.

THE FIRST $20,000: COMMUNITY INVESTMENT

An idea of this magnitude needs the people who believe it should exist.

I am inviting you to help build THE COTTON EXPERIENCE from the beginning.

And this is only the beginning!

We are building toward an approximately $350,000 fundraising goal for the inaugural 2027 experience, supported through corporate sponsorships, philanthropy, institutional partnerships, individual giving, earned revenue and in-kind contributions.

But before we can raise the larger capital, we have to build the foundation.

This first $20,000 gives our community the opportunity to become some of the earliest supporters of THE COTTON EXPERIENCE which is helping create the time, infrastructure and relationships necessary to transform this vision into something the world can actually walk into.

HELP US PLANT THE SEED

Listen to Season 1 & 2 of the Compost Cotton & Cornrows Podcast

Before we build the experience, we have to build the conditions that make it possible.

This is where it begins.