Dreaming of a Wearable Future
In the 1960s, the final frontier of space seemed to be drawing ever closer. As the United States and Soviet Union competed to reach milestones in space exploration, the aptly named “space race” accelerated technological advancement to make the goal of reaching the moon a reality. Once the setting of novels and shows, the formerly distant solar system became a stage for political tensions on Earth and sank into the aesthetics of the decade. A vision with a distinctive chrome sheen began to emerge—and expanded to the realm of fashion.
The futurism unique to the 60s are exemplified perfectly by the early designs of Paco Rabanne. In his debut collection—titled 12 Unwearable Dresses in Contemporary Materials—he used unconventional items like plastic and metal, shaped them into discs, then assembled dresses and accessories from the tiny pieces to create full outfits. To his audience at the time, such dresses were an alien reimagining of current fashion trends. Nearly 60 years later, the impractical dresses of the runway are not so far off from our reality, but perhaps not in the way Rabanne had envisioned.
Plastic as a material had already started to enter the mainstream in the 1950s, although certainly not in the form of solid discs. Instead, most people were familiar with wearing plastic in the form of synthetic fibers like polyester and nylon. Nonetheless, the marketing approach for such materials also relied on the new future provided by an artificial fabric. Polyester, in particular, was often advertised as something almost magical; born out of a lab, it was resistant to wrinkles and looked good as new with far less care than clothing made of materials like cotton and wool.
Such marketing turned out to not be so far off. Decades later, polyester has become the dominant material in the textile industry. Yet qualms about it from its very inception—such as its lack of breathability—have only increased. Combined with growing awareness of the environmental effects of polyester production and usage, its reputation as a futuristic fabric continues to deteriorate. In this sense, Rabanne’s prediction of an “unwearable” dress plays out before our eyes in the aisles of department stores rather than on runways.
Turning away from the once-spacefaring vision of polyester, its present-day associations center on its harm to our home planet. Polyester—just as all other synthetic fabrics—sheds microfibers when washed. These tiny fragments of plastic falling off of clothing, whether during production or in one’s own washing machine, end up in the water supply, with the amount of microplastics predicted to enter the oceans by 2050 being over 22 million tons. Once in water, plastic can be ingested by sea life and pose a risk to people as well who don’t have access to treatment facilities that will adequately remove the plastic from the water they use.
Where should we go from here, if a once-promising textile is revealed to offer convenience at the expense of our environment? Maybe we can again turn to Rabanne’s vision: “The only new frontier left in fashion is the finding of new materials.”
With much technological advancement since the 60s, our available palette of manmade fibers continues to expand, with next-generation materials drawing upon new sources and seeking to improve the weaknesses of today’s most common options. Yet however they are marketed, concerns once again arise in these supposed futuristic options. Bioplastics, for example, are a category of textile that combine biological and synthetic materials. Advertised for their supposed biodegradability, these claims were put to the test in a study performed at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and were found to be only half-true: the biological component of the fabric would degrade easily, but not the plastic portion.
The solution may lie in turning away from any plastic at all. As a category, next-gen materials encompass a broad range of options, some veering in completely different directions from commonly accepted origins like cotton and plastic. For example, polyester alternatives now include options like the algae-derived Kelsun. With companies ranging from H&M to Lululemon investing in next-generation startups, more and more clothes are expected to be produced using these newfound methods. In fact, a projected 8% of clothing will be made with next-generation materials by 2030.
Technological advancements have brought us closer to the spacefaring dreams of past artists, as well as the “unwearable” clothing they imagined—but with effects on our planet that they could not have accounted for. To create a future that can be lived in, the clothing industry must pivot away from plastic and once again turn toward the unconventional.