Nanotechnology in Fashion: The Trend in New Fabrics

Nanotechnology in Fashion The Trend in New Fabrics
Consumers have more choices in the type of fabrics they wear than ever before. In addition to natural fibers like cotton, silk and wool, there are now a wide variety of synthetics on the shelves.

Fans say high-tech microfibers offer better performance and more design options than their natural counterparts, and are nothing like the scratchy leisure suits of the past (think John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever). A new wave of nanotechnology allows clothes to resist spills and wrinkles, and wear longer between washings. As part of an NPR series on fashion, Leda Hartman takes a look at latest trends in textile technology.

Martha Parks, owner of Soho, an upscale women's boutique in Raleigh, N.C., says synthetics offer more design options than traditional fabrics.

"[French design firm] Girbaud is the company that brought me over to the other side, in that I had been a strictly silk, cotton, linen, wool, cashmere sort of person," Parks says. "I thought that was the finest that you could do, and it's just not true."

Girbaud, for instance, makes a wool and spandex skirt with an uneven hem, laser cutwork and random, permanent pleats.

Ingrid Johnson, a professor of textile development and marketing at the Fashion Institute of Technology, says today's synthetic fibers are smaller and softer than the polyester of yesteryear