Cotton Still Most Used Fabric In U.S.

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29942, 2 October 1962, Page 2

Cotton Still Most Used Fabric In U.S.

Cotton is still the leading fibre in the United States and is used for 63 per cent, of all fabrics on the market, according to Dr. Gene Shelden, a Full bright professor from Texas at present on the staff of the Home Science School, University of Otago.

“But this would not be so if the cotton industry had not developed ways of improving it to meet competition from manmade fabrics,*’ she said in an interview yesterday.

Dr. Shelden, who includes textiles among her teaching subjects at the Texas Technological College at Lubbock, said that though synthetics had revolutionised dress habits with their advantages of easy care and variety in weights, they represented only about 12 per cent of the fabrics used in the United States.

Many of the “wonder fabrics" were mixed with cotton. “Even dacron is more popular when combined with 35 per cent cotton than by itself." she said. Cotton had held its own in the fashion picture for about 10 years in the United States for all-eeaeon wear. Produced in a wide variety of weights and textures, it was used as a transition fabric tor autumn in "summer darks." in strong colours and with the appearance cd wool for indoor wear in the winter, and in subtle colours and lighter weights for spring and summer. Packables’ Knitted fabrics in cotton, wool, silk or man-made materials were very popular in the United States for “packables’'—clothes which stand up to travel and crushing in suitcases without creasing Silk was still regarded as a luxury fibre for high fashion garments in the United States. Dr. Shelden does not believe that wool will ever be replaced by man-made fibres. “No-one has ever been able to reproduce the crimp of wool in man-made fibre and it is the crimp which gives i

wool its resilience,” she said. Wool fabrics on the New Zealand marked were excellent. she remarked. Fabrics in New Zealand were all of good quality, but there was not the variety offered, as in the United States, because of the Dominion’s import restrictions.

“The New Zealand woman’s biggest problem seems to be that of matching fabrics with accessories,” she said. ’There needs to be closer co-ordina-tion between the manufacturers of the different types of wearing apparel.” Textile Trends

Textile trends in any country were closely associated with the life of the people. Unless they suited the needs of the consumer they were not accepted, she said. Changes in textiles in recent years had come about argely because of the comtetition between natural ibres and man-made fibres. “Texture interest for the present American fall will >e mainly in subtle suggestions of slubs in fabrics as a change from the rougher weaves of the past,” she said. Dr. Shelden gave a talk on textile trends in the United States to the Christchurch branch of the Association of Home Science Alumnae last evening