Chemical success on the catwalk

Chemistry is probably the last thing that springs to mind when the models strut down the catwalk dressed in the most fantastic creations. Despite this, chemical progress largely controls what we wear. Throughout our clothing history, the fashion world has been reliant on new, exciting materials.
At the end of the 17th century a new fashion emerged – hats of all types. Yes, there had been hats before this, but it was first with a new, chemical method of producing felt that prices fell and hats became accessible to all. Most natural fibres, including wool, have small hooks that keep the fibres together. When the wool is wetted and rubbed, the fibres attach to one another and create a compact layer of felt. The only problem was that it took a long time for the fibres to attach firmly.
It was probably the crusaders who brought the felt-making technique to Europe, and they had learnt that camel urine speeded the process up considerably. In Europe, the supply of camel urine was of course limited, and the felt makers began using their own urine instead. As the story goes, a French felt maker who suffered from syphilis made an interesting discovery – his urine created unusually good felt. At that time, syphilis was treated with mercury salts of various kinds and it was the mercury in the urine that did the trick. Because mercury easily bonds to the sulphur containing bridges in the proteins of the hair, the strands became softer and were easily formed into felt.

True or not, but during the 17th century, mercury nitrate began to be used in France to make felt from beaver fur. The French guarded the felt makers’ secret jealously until 1685, when freedom of religion was revoked in France by Louis XIV, and hundreds of thousands of French protestants, Huguenots, were forced to flee the country. Many of them ended up in England and they took the felt makers’ secret with them.

“Not only were their colours and patterns uncommonly fine, but clothes made of this cloth had a wonderful way of becoming invisible to anyone who was unfit for his office, or who was unusually stupid.” - Extract from the Emperor’s New Clothes by Hans Christian Andersen.

With new techniques for making felt, one of the longest fashion trends in history was established – hats, for which felt is the perfect material. Hats consequently became high fashion and over the next 200 years, beavers were hunted almost to extinction in most parts of the world – solely for the purpose of producing attractive hats. However, it was not only the beavers that fared badly. The hat factories were cramped and untidy and the hat makers were exposed to large quantities of mercury, which over time caused brain damage.

The mad hatter in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland has sometimes been diagnosed with mercury poisoning. Unlike his mercury poisoned counterparts, Carroll’s hat maker was extremely extrovert and his origins are probably to be sought elsewhere. There is a lot to suggest that Carroll was depicting a rather eccentric furniture seller in Oxford called Theophilus Carter. Carter always wore a top hat and was therefore known as the Mad Hatter. A curious fact is that he invented an alarm clock that tipped up the bed when it went off for the 1851 Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace in London.

In 1941 the mercury method was outlawed in the US and slowly but surely the hat lost its fashion status. John F. Kennedy, who never wore a hat, marked the beginning of a hat-free era.

At around the same time, Wallace Carothers was working at the company DuPont in the USA, trying to develop a type of artificial silk. After seven years of research, he succeeded, and a few years later he presented an amazing material – nylon. Nylon is a fairly strong polymer and since it can easily be spun into thin fibres, it soon found its way into the fashion world. In 1939, the first nylon stockings were sold in Wilmington, Delaware. Chaos ensued and when national sales started, all the pairs – around five million – sold out in a single day. Despite the fact that nylon stockings are not particularly hardwearing, they were far more durable and far cheaper than the alternative, silk.
The success of the nylon stocking had to wait, however, until the end of the war, because nylon was needed for everything from parachutes to mosquito nets. After the war, sales picked up again and from the fifties, nylon stockings became the norm. Nylon was followed by a number of other polymers. Polyester is a material that can be made almost wrinkle-free and that is easy to dye. Its qualities were quickly picked up by the fashion world and for a short but intensive period of horror and delight, shirts in anything but discreet patterns and colours were seen.

Spandex is the American name for the extremely elastic polymer also known as elastane or Lycra in Europe, a polymer that has an undeserved bad reputation. In the 1970s, spandex trousers were almost compulsory attire for groups such as Queen, Iron Maiden and Mötley Crüe. Today we find Lycra in almost all elastic materials, from the elastic band in the top of socks to beachwear, bra bands and cycling shorts. In the late fifties, the new material was so popular that it posed a major threat to the cotton industry. Despite some drawbacks, such as a bad odour, the new materials did not need ironing and remained smooth in all weathers.

When cotton gets wet, the bonds that keep the fabric smooth are broken and new bonds are formed, causing the shirt to become creased. In the early fifties, chemist Ruth Benerito worked at a government laboratory in New Orleans to find a way to make wrinkle-free cotton. Cotton is made up of long cellulose fibres and Benerito discovered that the fibres could be bonded together chemically. This meant the fibres were kept closer to one another and the wrinkle-free cotton shirt was born.

A large number of new, smart materials have emerged in recent years. In 1976 came the invention of Gore-Tex, a material that can breathe. It is really quite simple – the material is a kind of filter with very small pores. Since the pores are much smaller than a drop of water, but significantly larger than a water molecule, moisture passes through while rain is kept out. From the beginning, these materials were quite stiff, but with new, softer textiles, this material has also found its way into the world of fashion.

In the future we can expect to see many new, exciting properties that will influence fashion. Fabrics that change colour, do not stain or that sense if we have a fever already exist, and self-cleaning fabrics are on their way. The latest research findings show that it may become possible to create invisible material in the future. We will have to wait and see, or not see…

- Ulf Ellervik, Professor of Bioorganic Chemistry at Lund University