The case against polyester

Turn over the label on almost any affordable garment and you'll find it "polyester", on its own or quietly blended into cotton. It has become the most common fibre in the world.

We don't use it, in anything. Here is why.

Polyester is made from petroleum. Chemically, most of it is the same family of plastic as a drinks bottle, melted and spun into thread. It can be soft and it can be useful, but it is plastic all the same and it behaves like plastic.

Cotton and linen take up moisture and let it move away from the skin. Polyester holds very little, so sweat sits where it is and heat stays trapped. In an Indian summer, that is the difference between a shirt you forget you're wearing and one you can't wait to take off.

Synthetic fabrics are known to hold body odour more stubbornly than cotton, even after washing. It's one reason polyester garments so often go in the laundry after a single wear and come out not quite fresh.

Every wash releases tiny synthetic fibres, microplastics and many are too small to be caught on their way to rivers and the sea. Natural fibres shed too, but what they shed is plant, not plastic.

Cotton and linen break down at the end of their life. Polyester can persist for centuries. A polyester T-shirt worn for one summer can still be around long after everyone who wore it.

Because it's cheap, it resists creasing, it dries fast and it holds dye. Blending polyester into cotton lowers the cost of a garment without changing how it looks on a hanger. All good reasons to make clothing, if the only thing that matters is the price tag.

Natural fibres only. Today that means 100% combed cotton and 100% pure linen and never blended with polyester. As we add new categories, the rule comes with them.