Cloth Fibers / Textiles
- Cotton
- Linen
- Hemp
- Polyester
- Fleece - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_fleece
- Microfiber - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microfiber
- Wool
- Acrylic
- Silk
- Nylon
- Spandex/Elastane/Lycra
- Rayon
- Bamboo
- Lyocell/Tencel
Pros & Cons of Common Fabrics | Fibres & Fabrics Part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B4tfduOQ7w
Zoe Hong - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMQ_mPIBPi4IMpYEmuyOMqQ
Pill
A pill, colloquially known as a bobble, fuzzball, orlint ball is a small ball of fibers that forms on a piece of cloth. Pillis also a verb for the formation of such balls.
Pilling is a surface defect of textiles caused by wear, and is generally considered an undesirable trait.It happens when washing and wearing of fabrics causes loose fibers to begin to push out from the surface of the cloth, and, over time, abrasion causes the fibers to develop into small spherical bundles, anchored to the surface of the fabric by protruding fibers that haven't broken. The textile industry divides pilling into four stages: fuzz formation, entanglement, growth, and wear-off.
Pilling normally happens on the parts of clothing that receive the most abrasion in day-to-day wear, such as the collar, cuffs, and around the thighs and rear on trousers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pill_(textile)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nap_(fabric)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pile_(textile)
Knit vs Woven Fabric
Construction
Woven fabrics are created on weaving looms. These looms can be 54 inches wide and above. The main difference between knit vs woven fabrics is how they are constructed. Woven fabrics are created using several warps, or longitudinal yarns, and wefts, or latitudinal yarns. Knitting involves interloping or interlacing a single yarn or thread.
https://www.dutchlabelshop.com/en_us/blog/difference-knit-woven-fabric
Knitted Vs. Woven Fabrics - What's The Difference???
Twill
Twill is a type of textile weave with a pattern of diagonal parallel ribs. It is one of three fundamental types of textile weaves along with plain weave and satin. It is made by passing the weft thread over one or more warp threads then under two or more warp threads and so on, with a "step," or offset, between rows to create the characteristic diagonal pattern. Because of this structure, twill generally drapes well.
Twills can be divided into even-sided, warp-faced, and weft-faced. Even sided twills have the same amount of warp and weft threads visible on both sides of the fabric. Warp-faced twills have more warp threads visible on the face side, and weft-faced twills have more weft threads visible on the face side. Even-sided twills include foulard or surah, herringbone, houndstooth, serge, sharkskin, and twill flannel. Warp-faced twills include cavalry twill, chino, covert, denim, drill, fancy twill, gabardine, and lining twill.
Fabric Scorecard - Environmental Impact
28 clothing materials scored out of ten (10 = best) for environmental impact across seven axes — water, land, chemistry, carbon, lifespan, shedding, end of life — plus how easily each can be found in India.
Six Rules (matter more than fibre choice)
- Wear it 30+ times, at least - impact is counted per wear, not per garment. Wearing a shirt 30 times instead of 5 is 6x less impact per wear; 200 wears is 40x less again.
- Buy one fibre, never a blend - pure cotton and pure polyester can each be recycled; poly-cotton cannot be separated.
- Buy secondhand first - a used garment carries zero new production impact.
- Wash cold, full loads, air dry - most of a garment's lifetime energy is spent after purchase, not before.
- Repair before you replace - a re-stitched hem, a new zip, a resoled shoe each buy years for a fraction of the price.
- Read the fibre tag, not the ad - "eco", "natural", "bamboo" and "vegan" are marketing words; the composition label is a legal declaration.
The Full Scorecard
| Score | Material | Type | In India | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9.5 | Hemp | Cannabis sativa, industrial | Hard | Almost no water, no pesticide, builds soil |
| 9 | Linen | Flax | Easy | Rain-fed, whole plant used, lasts decades |
| 8.5 | Ramie | China grass | Hard | Linen's profile, needs more processing |
| 8.5 | Khadi | Hand-spun, hand-woven cotton | Easy | Near-zero process energy, rural livelihoods |
| 8.5 | Recycled cotton | Post-industrial/post-consumer | Moderate | Skips farming entirely; short fibres |
| 8.5 | Recycled wool | Shoddy yarn | Easy | India already does this at huge scale |
| 8 | Jute | Golden fibre | Easy | Grows almost anywhere, coarse for apparel |
| 7.5 | Lyocell / TENCEL | Closed-loop wood pulp | Moderate | 99% solvent recovery; not strictly natural |
| 7 | Organic cotton | GOTS certified | Easy | No synthetic pesticide, still thirsty |
| 7 | Alpaca | South American camelid | Hard | Low-impact grazer, near-zero Indian supply |
| 6.5 | Wool | Extensive/regenerative | Moderate | Methane and land, but decades of wear |
| 6.5 | Eri silk | Ahimsa/peace silk | Moderate | Moth is not killed; Assam-grown |
| 6 | Pashmina | Changthangi goat, Ladakh | Moderate | Tiny volumes, fragile grassland, faked a lot |
| 5.5 | Mulberry silk | Bombyx mori | Easy | Small land use, heavy water and energy |
| 5.5 | Modal | Certified beech pulp | Moderate | Better than viscose, still chemical-heavy |
| 4 | Conventional cotton | BT/hybrid | Easy | 2,700 L a shirt and pesticide-hungry |
| 4 | Leather, veg-tanned | Bark tanned | Moderate | Cattle footprint, but 20-year lifespan |
| 4 | Recycled polyester | rPET from bottles | Easy | Best plastic. Still sheds microfibre |
| 3 | Viscose / rayon | Conventional, Liva-type | Easy | Forest risk and carbon-disulfide process |
| 3 | Bamboo fabric | = bamboo viscose | Easy | Marketed as natural. It is chemical rayon |
| 3 | Cashmere | Changra/Mongolian goat | Moderate | Overgrazing is desertifying grasslands |
| 2.5 | Leather, chrome-tanned | Standard commercial | Easy | Chromium effluent plus cattle footprint |
| 2 | Polyester | Virgin PET | Easy | Fossil feedstock, permanent microfibre |
| 1.5 | Nylon / polyamide | PA6, PA66 | Easy | Production emits nitrous oxide |
| 1.5 | Poly-cotton blend | PC 65/35 etc. | Easy | Both footprints, and unrecyclable |
| 1 | Acrylic | PAN | Easy | The worst microfibre shedder measured |
| 1 | Elastane / spandex | Lycra, spandex | Easy | 2% ruins a whole garment for recycling |
| 0.5 | PVC 'vegan leather' | Polyvinyl chloride | Easy | Plasticisers and dioxins. Dies in 2 years |
Bands: 8.0-10 Buy Freely · 6.0-7.9 Certify It · 4.0-5.9 Keep It Long · 2.0-3.9 Rarely · 0-1.9 Only If Forced
The big deception: Viscose, modal, and bamboo fabric are the three most often sold in India as "natural", "eco" or "plant-based". All three are chemically regenerated (dissolved plant pulp reconstituted with harsh solvents like carbon disulfide) — the plant they started as tells you nothing about their footprint.
Certification Marks That Mean Something
- GOTS - green tag with licence number; covers the farm and every step after for organic cotton.
- Khadi Mark - KVIC tag confirming genuinely hand-spun, hand-woven cloth.
- India Handloom - registered government mark for hand-woven cloth.
- Silk Mark - Central Silk Board numbered hologram; rules out polyester sold as silk.
- Woolmark - plain Woolmark means all new wool; Woolmark Blend/Wool Blend mean progressively less.
- GRS (Global Recycled Standard) - verifies recycled content claims, including recycled polyester.
- GI tag - names the actual cluster (Chanderi, Maheshwari, Kanjeevaram, Pochampally, Kota Doria, Muga, Kashmir Pashmina).
Words that mean nothing: Bamboo (almost always viscose), Vegan leather (usually PVC/PU), Eco/green/conscious (unregulated), Natural fibre (viscose and modal are plant-derived too), 100% pure (pure what?), Pashmina under Rs 5,000 (real pashmina cannot be made at that price).
Microplastics
Plastic microfibre is too small for any household or municipal filter — once it leaves wash water it is gone for good.
- Makes shedding worse: fleece/brushed/fluffy surfaces, hot water and long cycles, half-empty drums, the first few washes of a new garment, tumble drying.
- Reduces shedding: wash synthetics less often, cold water/short cycle/full load, air dry, a filter bag or drum filter, buying fewer new synthetics.
- Where it goes: the wash → the drain (no household filter catches it) → the river (treatment removes some) → the food chain (fish, salt, drinking water) → back to you (found in human blood, lungs, and placenta).
- India already has three advantages it's quietly losing: air drying is the default, repair (tailor/cobbler/darner) is still cheap and nearby, and clothes get passed down through families rather than binned.
- Man-made fibre is now ~52% of Indian fibre use, ahead of cotton at ~41%. A single 6 kg acrylic wash load can release ~700k microfibres in lab testing. Nylon production emits nitrous oxide, ~273x more warming potency than CO2.
What to Buy, by Garment
| Garment | Recommendation |
|---|---|
| Everyday t-shirt | Organic cotton, or plain cotton kept for years |
| Shirt or kurta | Linen, khadi or handloom cotton |
| Saree | Handloom cotton, eri silk or a GI-tagged weave |
| Summerwear | Linen and khadi |
| Winterwear | Real wool or recycled wool, never acrylic |
| Activewear | Recycled polyester - accept it, wash rarely |
| Rainwear | Recycled polyester or nylon - buy once, keep ten years |
| Denim | Cotton, with as little elastane as possible |
| Innerwear | Organic cotton or lyocell |
| Bags and shoes | Veg-tanned leather, canvas or jute - never PVC |
| Bedsheets | 100% cotton (poly-cotton is the default, so ask) |
| Kids' clothes | Cotton or khadi - they outgrow it, so pass it on |
Five-Second Tag Check
- Find the composition tag before looking at the price.
- One fibre if possible - two or more usually means it can never be recycled.
- Elastane is fine in socks/activewear (need the stretch); worth skipping in shirts, denim, bedsheets.
- Acrylic or woollen - check which one it actually says.
- Ask for the certificate number if paying an organic or recycled premium.
- The real question: will I wear this thirty times?
If you change one thing: choose single-fibre where reasonable, and don't throw out plastic clothing you already own — replacing a working polyester shirt with a new cotton one makes things worse, not better. Wear it out first.
Sources: weighted read of published life-cycle assessment literature (comparative LCAs of cotton, polyester, viscose, lyocell; Napper & Thompson microfibre shedding studies; Textile Exchange fibre data; India Ministry of Textiles National Household Survey 2024; KVIC/Central Silk Board/Textiles Committee certification schemes; NDPS Act state hemp licensing). Prices are indicative mid-2026 Indian retail.
The Fabric Scorecard - Dhruv Rathee Academy (PDF)
From the companion video (How Fashion Industry is DESTROYING the World? - Dhruv Rathee): fast fashion's speed is the mechanism behind the churn. Zara compressed design-to-store time from the old industry standard of 6 months down to 15 days, running 52 "micro-seasons" a year instead of two. Shein pushed further to ~3 days design-to-sale-ready, adding 2,000-10,000 new styles a day - doing in a week what Zara does in a year. The result: 100-150 billion garments are manufactured globally per year, about 14 pieces for every person on Earth.
See also: durable-clothing-brands-value-for-money for specific brands (men/women/kids) that apply these durability principles in practice.