A FU-JIN Guide to:
Fabrics and materials
Materials are an important factor that decide how a garment feels. A clothing item that fits great can still feel awful with the wrong materials. In this Guide we're going to show you everything you need to know about fabrics.
- ​Natural vs Synthetic material
- ​How fabrics are made
- Material properties​
This Guide can be specifically useful when looking for new clothes or if you want to get a deeper understanding about how things are made.
Natural vs Synthetic materials
Fabrics can be divided into two categories: natural fabrics and synthetic fabrics. There is kind of a third one but we’ll talk about that one later.
Natural fabrics come from as the word implies from nature. Think of animal hair from sheep/goat/llama/alpaca/camel (wool), animal skins from cow/snake/alligator/sheep (leather), animal products silkworm (silk), or plants (hemp, cotton, jute, flax). There are many more but these are the more common ones.
Synthetic fabrics are made from oils, petrochemicals or coal. These create your: polyesters, polyamids, acrylfabrics, viscoses, nylons and imitation fabrics. Because these fabrics are plastics, washing and wearing them releases microplastics into the environment. Damaging not only nature but also our health.
