Sustainable Textile Innovations From China

China is still an important place for designers to source fabrics. Intertextile Shanghai has become one of the most important textile shows in the world. Because of China's massive textile industry with established supply chains, suppliers are more flexible than ever before. This means exciting new developments on the material side. We spoke with Vincent Djen, co-founder of FashionEx and creator of The Fashion Knowledge Network, about the best sustainable and functional fabrics he's seeing coming out of China today.

I'm starting to see more materials incorporate DuPont's eco-efficient performance fiber Sorona. Once used mainly as outerwear fillings, it has now developed into fabrics such as cotton-Sorona mix or cotton-linen-Soronoa mix. The fiber has a natural stretch in it, so it gives the fabric a stretch while also being wrinkle-less.

Natural dyes are also seeing a huge uptick in popularity. Many brands are using natural dyes on products such as underwear, dresses, and even bed sheets. Academia and companies are actively working on increasing the colorfastness. One method is by pretreating cotton fabric with cation to minimize water usage while increasing the colorfastness at the same time.

Other sustainable fabrics such as silicon based leather alternatives, recycled cotton, and recycled polyester are gaining popularity too.

On the functional side, graphene is definitely the big thing now. Graphene has a lot of interesting properties, such as high strength, anti-static, and anti-uv functions.

Want to know more? Contact Vincent at vincent@thefashionknowledgenetwork.com. And source sustainable materials HERE.