Musings on Art and Style

A Disgruntled Rant on the Current State of Garment Fabrics in America

This morning I was browsing the Menswear department in my local branch of one of the largest retail companies on the planet. I was searching for the simplest item imaginable: a solid white t-shirt. My only stipulation was that the t-shirt must be 100% cotton. Going into it I believed this to be such a small ask that it was practically inconsequential… but oh my, was I wrong. 

There were five brands available with all of them offering multiple iterations of solid colored crew neck tees giving me approximately ten to twelve options to choose from. To my astonishment, there were only two options that were made of 100% cotton. The rest featured various percentages of spandex, viscose, nylon and polyesters. All of these synthetic fiber concoctions muddled up a garment that was perfect in its simplicity. That same muddling has been done to pretty much every other type of garment available in the American marketplace. Synthetic blending has been done for financial gain then marketed as beneficial to the consumer and it is driving me crazy.

Blended fabrics have been around for thousands of years and synthetic fabrics have been prevalent since the 1960s. Until recently, natural and synthetic fabrics have remained mostly separate outside of technical, professional, and niche clothing. Then over the past decade clothing brands have sneakily infiltrated 100% natural and natural blends with synthetic fibers. It began with 2% here, 10% there, until most fabrics on the market contain half the natural fiber they were traditionally made of.

Marketing departments spun these changes as improvements that would provide better breathability, flexibility, and shape retention. The simple truth is that these synthetic fabrics were added to save money. They allowed companies to produce the same garments for cheaper while selling them for the same price, if not more. Most synthetic fabrics are petroleum based and no petroleum based fabric breathes anywhere near as well as cotton. Yes, some synthetics are more flexible and hold their shape better than cotton at first but those attributes wear out far quicker in synthetic fibers, exacerbating blend separation. 

I could drone on for pages about the individual types of garments that have been sullied by synthetic blending but instead I will focus on the most egregious offender: denim. Denim, just like Scotch, requires specific ingredients to be assembled by a specific process. Any deviation from the recipe creates something completely different. If you use water sourced from outside to the Scottish Highlands then you may make a perfectly fine whiskey but it is not scotch. If you blend elastin with your cotton then you may end up with a perfectly adequate fabric but it is not denim. Therefore, the “stretch denim” that has overtaken the American marketplace like a ravenous fungus is a misnomer. The very presence of the fiber providing the “stretch” negates the designation of the fabric as “denim.”

I must concede that the pervasiveness of “stretch denim” is due to people genuinely preferring the give provided by 2% elastin. However, that preference is due to a fundamental misunderstanding of denim. Denim is a miraculous fabric assembled with a particular weave that starts out rigid then gives and takes as it molds to the owner’s body, creating a fit that is unique to the owner. That same rigidness also provides durability. “Stretch denim” is also a bit lighter weight but good denim is supposed to have some heft to it. Like Boris the Bullet Dodger said in Snatch, “Heavy is good, heavy reliable, I always go for reliability. If it doesn’t work, you can always hit him with it.” Ok, maybe that last part doesn’t apply to denim. 

As with every other fabric, the artificial blending is done to cut cost. Even that 2% of cotton that is replaced by elastin makes a substantial difference when applied to the scale at which large brands produce their garments (this goes for chino fabric as well). The price cutting is an illusion because quality denim will last about four times longer than cheap denim and the market price is usually only forty to thirty percent cheaper. A proper denim should cost between $100 and $200 because it requires quality cotton to be woven in the correct way then assembled by skilled craftsmen with durable hardware. 

Not only will a genuine, quality denim hold up to wear and tear for much longer, it will also take much better to repair. A proper pair of denim purchased for around $150 should last at least six to eight years of consistent wear (average of once a week) and far longer with less frequent wear (about once a month). This lifespan is improved exponentially with repairs, especially Japanese Shahiko methods. 

A trick of the trade that I picked up long ago is to always look at a garment’s care tag to see what the fabric is made of. Every type of fabric has a different set of properties and every combination of fabrics further complicates those properties. Some fabrics get along and others don’t. Cotton can balance out wool’s itch and provide strength and stability to linen. Silk will add softness and lighten up most natural fiber blends but you don’t want more than more than 20% because it can become too fragile. Cashmere and Alpaca play well with wool but less so with cotton. 

As a general rule, avoid any combination of natural and synthetic fibers. Firstly this should be done because natural and synthetic fibers tend to separate over time, with wear and wash these blends develop a shiny pilling as the synthetic fibers start to separate out from the natural and appear as tiny little shiny hairs. This will be particularly noticeable on friction points like the seat and inner thigh and where sleeves rub your torso. You should absolutely never purchase these blends in suiting because your suit will develop a shine and deteriorate exponentially faster than natural fibers. Secondly, natural and synthetic blends are impossible to recycle. Huge strides are being made in fabric recycling but natural fibers cannot be separated from synthetics by any recycling process and the two categories require completely different processing techniques. 

Of course you want to stick to 100% fabrics in most cases. Unblended fabrics will always last longer because the fibers are not fighting each other on a microscopic level to separate with every motion of the garment. Soon enough, most 100% fabrics will be recyclable on a scale with paper goods. Natural fabrics have the added benefit of being biodegradable. Blends and synthetics have their place in athletic wear and underwear and are required for many professional uses. Both blends and synthetics make cheap and useful weather resistant fabrics but I will take waxed or rubberised cotton over synthetics any day. 

The future of the fashion industry lies in the hands of the consumer. Just like with all industries, a well informed consumer makes for a better market. Improving the fashion market is vitally important because the industry has been one of the planets biggest contributors to plastic and chemical pollution over the past century.

My hope is that this disgruntled rant encourages everyone who reads to check the care tag before purchase and allow that to inform their decision. You don’t have to agree with the opinions that I shared here, I am aware of how divisive some of them are, but everyone who purchases clothing must own their culpability for the damage that clothing has and could cause our environment. For God’s sake though, please buy 100% cotton t-shirts. 

But don’t take my word for it! Here’s some further reading:

Acteevism features everyday tips and tricks for being responsible about your style.

Apparel Insider is pretty much the Wall Street Journal for the apparel industry.

Fashion for Good can teach you about the lifecycle of your clothing and how it effects the world we live in.

Fashion Revolution’s How To Guides will teach you everything you want to know about shopping for, wearing, and maintaining clothes responsibly.