“REVOLUTION” IN DRESS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LIV, 12 January 1921, Page 7

“REVOLUTION” IN DRESS

Are we on the threshold of a sweeping revolution in the manufacture of dress materials? The question is asked by a Paris correspondent in announcing a French invention—a machine foi extracting firbes ; from the leavesof wild pineapple, the banana, white netile, and numerous other growths in tropical countries, and using them in place of hemp and flax, of which the production has diminished since the war. In these days of dear clothing, says the correspondent, the invention opens out the possibility ot a wave of cheapness by the introduction of garments woven with these fibres. We are told that the inventor is a great) traveller, , and lived for a long-time in i«icarague and Brazil. He had watched the natives combing with elementary instruments fibrous plants, and he set to work to con- ' struct a machine to do the business. It is a machine of copper rollers which crush the plants, of Hma.ll hammers which beat them, and of combs, ■ which do their work without breaking the fibres. ■ A process of brushing removes the last vegetable fragments from the fibres, which are combed and bleached by washing. The machine is worked by a motor of two • horse-power, and in the course of a single day it can absorb from 35 to 40 tons of raw material. The best results are obtained from the wild pineapples whose leaves produce long fibres, which, after treatment, can be, likened sometimes to cotton, sometimes to silk. As yet we do not hear of any garments having been made from these fibres, and therefore there are no details as to prices.. Certainly the cost willdetermine whether, men will be willing' to wear pineapple suits, whether women will try the experiment of wearing banana robes, or whether we shall be content to sleep between, palmleaf blankets.