Cotton Record Price Lifts Costs for Gap Denim Supplier, Fun-Tees

A doubling of cotton prices since Feb. 1 may mean more expensive clothes, sheets and towels as textile mills including India’s Arvind Ltd. and retailers such as Next Plc pass along higher costs to their customers.

Next, a Leicester, England-based clothing retailer, said yesterday it will raise prices as much as 8 percent in the first quarter because of the jump in costs. Ahmedabad, Gujarat-based Arvind, the world’s largest denim maker and a supplier to jeans maker Levi Strauss & Co. and Gap Inc., have raised prices by as much as 15 percent, Citigroup Inc. economists Rohini Malkani and Anushka Shah wrote in an Oct. 11 report.