Textiles: It’s all happening organically

If customers think our drycleaners and wetcleaners are often ‘magicians’ when collecting immaculate garments that arrived at the shops in terrible condition, they don’t know the half of it.

That’s all right though, as it’s the behind-the-scenes professionalism and expertise that keep the profits rolling.

But some cleaners are themselves still in the dark about developments in the textiles world which are likely to shape their working lives in the next couple of decades. As Ken Cupitt of the Guild of Cleaners and Launderers says: “It’s going to be a big learning curve – which is already happening now and what’s coming along in the near future is only going to greatly expand on that.”

Laundry and Cleaning Today caught up with the Guild at CleanEx, which took place just after Cupitt had issued technical bulletins to members on what’s just around the corner. Well done to those who expressed an interest in joining the Guild while visiting their stand at the exhibition – you’re going to need the support and knowledge base of experts watching the trends.

We’re talking about the sometimes weird but often wonderful organic materials now making their way into clothing as a result of sustainability and environmental campaigns. There are items which will never make it beyond a designer’s concept garment, but others will flourish. And what’s making a difference for some projects is nanotechnology and AI, solving how to mass-produce fibres for textiles and garment production.

“All of this is going to create dilemmas for cleaners, particularly if the care label doesn’t correctly or fully state the garment’s contents,” says Cupitt. “And while the owner or senior manager at the shop may be aware of the latest developments in garment manufacture and best practice, you may have someone on the counter receiving the clothes who is not at the technical level needed to spot a potential tripwire.”

These tripwires, of course, include a diligent cleaner processing a garment only for it to shrink, clump or release dyes, resulting in complaints and sometimes compensation.

We’ll take a closer look at care labelling in our next issue, and the Guild will expand training, issue alerts to members and continue to collaborate with the Association of Suppliers to the British Clothing Industry (ASBCI). Cleaners face a revolution equivalent to the one when polyester first appeared in the 1950s.

We’re talking about the sometimes weird but often wonderful organic materials now making their way into clothing

While they’re busy doing that, let’s enter that weird and wonderful world we mentioned. We’ll start with those ‘mini bulrushes’, also called cattail but correctly known as typha latifolia, a familiar hardy and fast-growing wetland plant that doesn’t need pesticides. But to the ingenious founders of Bristol-based start-up Ponda, it’s BioPuff, the name they’ve given to the warm high-performance plant-based jacket filling they’re producing from typha, reducing the reliance on feather and synthetic fillers.

BioPuff wadding made from typha is now being produced for Ponda’s commercial clients

There are about 30 species of these semi-aquatic perennial plants. Ponda is heavily involved in encouraging farmers with land unsuitable for other crops to move across to paludiculture, the term for growing crops in wet soils and otherwise unusable land like rewetted peat sites. Typha leaves can be turned into fibre, while the seed heads are the source of padding, and can be combined with recycled polyester with enhanced biodegradation.

Ponda’s four young founders first met while studying at Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art. Fuelling their development of BioPuff have been major institutional investors and vital government grants totalling £4.8 million to date for R&D and land-based studies.

They’ve been showcasing the product at conservation shows and exhibitions on regenerative food and farming and have been able to work with leading brands such as Berghaus, Ahluwalia and Stella McCartney. Now the aim is to make BioPuff ‘mainstream’ and equity crowdfunding is just starting through the Republic Europe platform.

The rapidly changing face of materials used in garments is accelerating – particularly in the use of organic materials and synthetic options which can replace depleted natural resources, make excellent use of what’s usually considered ‘waste’ or ensure cruelty-free options exist.

Bioengineered spider silk yarns produced by Germany’s AMSilk featured in the first such commercially available garments within Balenciaga’s Spring 2026 collection, now available in select Balenciaga stores worldwide and online. AMSik have worked with 21st.Bio in a partnership which provides them with the technology and expertise to produce synthetic spider silk at scale.

Harvesting naturally produced spider silk is an impossibility (not least because spiders tend to be cannibalistic) but businesses at the forefront of biotechnology are using fermentation processes which put spider silk genes into the likes of bacteria or yeast to ‘grow’ the fibres. Others are geneticallyengineering bog-standard silkworms by inserting the spider genes which produce their silk.

Why do it? Because natural spider silk is one of nature’s wonders when it comes to strength and flexibility even before we’ve considered its obvious biodegradability.

Swiftly legging it on from spiders, another fascinating arena is where fruit waste is finding a new home in garments. Take, for instance, Orange Fiber’s mission to create circular fabrics made using citrus fruit waste from Italy, the bits that don’t end up in the juice. Orange Fiber obtains cellulose from production sites in Sicily. In a partnership with Lenzing Group, who produce wood-based specialty fibres, including Tencel Lyocell and Modal. The pulp is processed into textile fibre used in exclusive yarns and fabrics. The result is incredibly smooth, fluid and lightweight fabrics that can be blended with other natural fibres to produce everything from denims to satins.

Sticking with fruit, in Kenya pineapple pulp waste is being converted into premium vegan leather by materials science company Eco Nasi. Apart from being cruelty-free, a big gain is that when the garment reaches end of life it biodegrades within six months. Eco Nasi collects unwanted pineapple leaves from farms and then processes them to extract fibres which can be cleaned and dried before being spun into yarn woven to produce the fake leather. If the global fungal protein and material market is a mystery to you, at least know that it’s ‘mushrooming’.

Mycelium is the big thing here, even if we’re talking tiny threads in its natural form. It too is being used to make artificial lab-grown leather, but there’s much more.

Netherlands-based biomaterial technology company Mycotex, for instance, is confident mycelium-based textiles and furnishings have a big future.

One of the issues with some past ‘cruelty-free’ synthetic options is that they are now shedding microplastics into the environment at alarming rates. If the use of organic materials brings that to an end, all of us on this planet – including the animals – will gain.

We’ve only touched the surface in this article. Everything from bamboo to seaweed is more than under the microscope as science and AI take us into a new world of garment production. How about textiles which have been engineered using modified squid genes so that if the garment ‘spots’ a small tear it can mend itself? Not fanciful, scientists actually announced that bit of magic a decade ago.

Whatever next will be coming across your counter?

Janice Raycroft

Tasty… but can you spot the artificial leather?

If customers think our drycleaners and wetcleaners are often ‘magicians’ when collecting immaculate garments that arrived at the shops in terrible condition, they don’t know the half of it.

That’s all right though, as it’s the behind-the-scenes professionalism and expertise that keep the profits rolling.

But some cleaners are themselves still in the dark about developments in the textiles world which are likely to shape their working lives in the next couple of decades. As Ken Cupitt of the Guild of Cleaners and Launderers says: “It’s going to be a big learning curve – which is already happening now and what’s coming along in the near future is only going to greatly expand on that.”

Laundry and Cleaning Today caught up with the Guild at CleanEx, which took place just after Cupitt had issued technical bulletins to members on what’s just around the corner. Well done to those who expressed an interest in joining the Guild while visiting their stand at the exhibition – you’re going to need the support and knowledge base of experts watching the trends.

We’re talking about the sometimes weird but often wonderful organic materials now making their way into clothing as a result of sustainability and environmental campaigns. There are items which will never make it beyond a designer’s concept garment, but others will flourish. And what’s making a difference for some projects is nanotechnology and AI, solving how to mass-produce fibres for textiles and garment production.

“All of this is going to create dilemmas for cleaners, particularly if the care label doesn’t correctly or fully state the garment’s contents,” says Cupitt. “And while the owner or senior manager at the shop may be aware of the latest developments in garment manufacture and best practice, you may have someone on the counter receiving the clothes who is not at the technical level needed to spot a potential tripwire.”

These tripwires, of course, include a diligent cleaner processing a garment only for it to shrink, clump or release dyes, resulting in complaints and sometimes compensation.

We’ll take a closer look at care labelling in our next issue, and the Guild will expand training, issue alerts to members and continue to collaborate with the Association of Suppliers to the British Clothing Industry (ASBCI). Cleaners face a revolution equivalent to the one when polyester first appeared in the 1950s.

We’re talking about the sometimes weird but often wonderful organic materials now making their way into clothing

While they’re busy doing that, let’s enter that weird and wonderful world we mentioned. We’ll start with those ‘mini bulrushes’, also called cattail but correctly known as typha latifolia, a familiar hardy and fast-growing wetland plant that doesn’t need pesticides. But to the ingenious founders of Bristol-based start-up Ponda, it’s BioPuff, the name they’ve given to the warm high-performance plant-based jacket filling they’re producing from typha, reducing the reliance on feather and synthetic fillers.

BioPuff wadding made from typha is now being produced for Ponda’s commercial clients

There are about 30 species of these semi-aquatic perennial plants. Ponda is heavily involved in encouraging farmers with land unsuitable for other crops to move across to paludiculture, the term for growing crops in wet soils and otherwise unusable land like rewetted peat sites. Typha leaves can be turned into fibre, while the seed heads are the source of padding, and can be combined with recycled polyester with enhanced biodegradation.

Ponda’s four young founders first met while studying at Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art. Fuelling their development of BioPuff have been major institutional investors and vital government grants totalling £4.8 million to date for R&D and land-based studies.

They’ve been showcasing the product at conservation shows and exhibitions on regenerative food and farming and have been able to work with leading brands such as Berghaus, Ahluwalia and Stella McCartney. Now the aim is to make BioPuff ‘mainstream’ and equity crowdfunding is just starting through the Republic Europe platform.

The rapidly changing face of materials used in garments is accelerating – particularly in the use of organic materials and synthetic options which can replace depleted natural resources, make excellent use of what’s usually considered ‘waste’ or ensure cruelty-free options exist.

Bioengineered spider silk yarns produced by Germany’s AMSilk featured in the first such commercially available garments within Balenciaga’s Spring 2026 collection, now available in select Balenciaga stores worldwide and online. AMSik have worked with 21st.Bio in a partnership which provides them with the technology and expertise to produce synthetic spider silk at scale.

Harvesting naturally produced spider silk is an impossibility (not least because spiders tend to be cannibalistic) but businesses at the forefront of biotechnology are using fermentation processes which put spider silk genes into the likes of bacteria or yeast to ‘grow’ the fibres. Others are geneticallyengineering bog-standard silkworms by inserting the spider genes which produce their silk.

Why do it? Because natural spider silk is one of nature’s wonders when it comes to strength and flexibility even before we’ve considered its obvious biodegradability.

Swiftly legging it on from spiders, another fascinating arena is where fruit waste is finding a new home in garments. Take, for instance, Orange Fiber’s mission to create circular fabrics made using citrus fruit waste from Italy, the bits that don’t end up in the juice. Orange Fiber obtains cellulose from production sites in Sicily. In a partnership with Lenzing Group, who produce wood-based specialty fibres, including Tencel Lyocell and Modal. The pulp is processed into textile fibre used in exclusive yarns and fabrics. The result is incredibly smooth, fluid and lightweight fabrics that can be blended with other natural fibres to produce everything from denims to satins.

Sticking with fruit, in Kenya pineapple pulp waste is being converted into premium vegan leather by materials science company Eco Nasi. Apart from being cruelty-free, a big gain is that when the garment reaches end of life it biodegrades within six months. Eco Nasi collects unwanted pineapple leaves from farms and then processes them to extract fibres which can be cleaned and dried before being spun into yarn woven to produce the fake leather. If the global fungal protein and material market is a mystery to you, at least know that it’s ‘mushrooming’.

Mycelium is the big thing here, even if we’re talking tiny threads in its natural form. It too is being used to make artificial lab-grown leather, but there’s much more.

Netherlands-based biomaterial technology company Mycotex, for instance, is confident mycelium-based textiles and furnishings have a big future.

One of the issues with some past ‘cruelty-free’ synthetic options is that they are now shedding microplastics into the environment at alarming rates. If the use of organic materials brings that to an end, all of us on this planet – including the animals – will gain.

We’ve only touched the surface in this article. Everything from bamboo to seaweed is more than under the microscope as science and AI take us into a new world of garment production. How about textiles which have been engineered using modified squid genes so that if the garment ‘spots’ a small tear it can mend itself? Not fanciful, scientists actually announced that bit of magic a decade ago.

Whatever next will be coming across your counter?

Janice Raycroft

Tasty… but can you spot the artificial leather?

If customers think our drycleaners and wetcleaners are often ‘magicians’ when collecting immaculate garments that arrived at the shops in terrible condition, they don’t know the half of it.

That’s all right though, as it’s the behind-the-scenes professionalism and expertise that keep the profits rolling.

But some cleaners are themselves still in the dark about developments in the textiles world which are likely to shape their working lives in the next couple of decades. As Ken Cupitt of the Guild of Cleaners and Launderers says: “It’s going to be a big learning curve – which is already happening now and what’s coming along in the near future is only going to greatly expand on that.”

Laundry and Cleaning Today caught up with the Guild at CleanEx, which took place just after Cupitt had issued technical bulletins to members on what’s just around the corner. Well done to those who expressed an interest in joining the Guild while visiting their stand at the exhibition – you’re going to need the support and knowledge base of experts watching the trends.

We’re talking about the sometimes weird but often wonderful organic materials now making their way into clothing as a result of sustainability and environmental campaigns. There are items which will never make it beyond a designer’s concept garment, but others will flourish. And what’s making a difference for some projects is nanotechnology and AI, solving how to mass-produce fibres for textiles and garment production.

“All of this is going to create dilemmas for cleaners, particularly if the care label doesn’t correctly or fully state the garment’s contents,” says Cupitt. “And while the owner or senior manager at the shop may be aware of the latest developments in garment manufacture and best practice, you may have someone on the counter receiving the clothes who is not at the technical level needed to spot a potential tripwire.”

These tripwires, of course, include a diligent cleaner processing a garment only for it to shrink, clump or release dyes, resulting in complaints and sometimes compensation.

We’ll take a closer look at care labelling in our next issue, and the Guild will expand training, issue alerts to members and continue to collaborate with the Association of Suppliers to the British Clothing Industry (ASBCI). Cleaners face a revolution equivalent to the one when polyester first appeared in the 1950s.

We’re talking about the sometimes weird but often wonderful organic materials now making their way into clothing

While they’re busy doing that, let’s enter that weird and wonderful world we mentioned. We’ll start with those ‘mini bulrushes’, also called cattail but correctly known as typha latifolia, a familiar hardy and fast-growing wetland plant that doesn’t need pesticides. But to the ingenious founders of Bristol-based start-up Ponda, it’s BioPuff, the name they’ve given to the warm high-performance plant-based jacket filling they’re producing from typha, reducing the reliance on feather and synthetic fillers.

BioPuff wadding made from typha is now being produced for Ponda’s commercial clients

There are about 30 species of these semi-aquatic perennial plants. Ponda is heavily involved in encouraging farmers with land unsuitable for other crops to move across to paludiculture, the term for growing crops in wet soils and otherwise unusable land like rewetted peat sites. Typha leaves can be turned into fibre, while the seed heads are the source of padding, and can be combined with recycled polyester with enhanced biodegradation.

Ponda’s four young founders first met while studying at Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art. Fuelling their development of BioPuff have been major institutional investors and vital government grants totalling £4.8 million to date for R&D and land-based studies.

They’ve been showcasing the product at conservation shows and exhibitions on regenerative food and farming and have been able to work with leading brands such as Berghaus, Ahluwalia and Stella McCartney. Now the aim is to make BioPuff ‘mainstream’ and equity crowdfunding is just starting through the Republic Europe platform.

The rapidly changing face of materials used in garments is accelerating – particularly in the use of organic materials and synthetic options which can replace depleted natural resources, make excellent use of what’s usually considered ‘waste’ or ensure cruelty-free options exist.

Bioengineered spider silk yarns produced by Germany’s AMSilk featured in the first such commercially available garments within Balenciaga’s Spring 2026 collection, now available in select Balenciaga stores worldwide and online. AMSik have worked with 21st.Bio in a partnership which provides them with the technology and expertise to produce synthetic spider silk at scale.

Harvesting naturally produced spider silk is an impossibility (not least because spiders tend to be cannibalistic) but businesses at the forefront of biotechnology are using fermentation processes which put spider silk genes into the likes of bacteria or yeast to ‘grow’ the fibres. Others are geneticallyengineering bog-standard silkworms by inserting the spider genes which produce their silk.

Why do it? Because natural spider silk is one of nature’s wonders when it comes to strength and flexibility even before we’ve considered its obvious biodegradability.

Swiftly legging it on from spiders, another fascinating arena is where fruit waste is finding a new home in garments. Take, for instance, Orange Fiber’s mission to create circular fabrics made using citrus fruit waste from Italy, the bits that don’t end up in the juice. Orange Fiber obtains cellulose from production sites in Sicily. In a partnership with Lenzing Group, who produce wood-based specialty fibres, including Tencel Lyocell and Modal. The pulp is processed into textile fibre used in exclusive yarns and fabrics. The result is incredibly smooth, fluid and lightweight fabrics that can be blended with other natural fibres to produce everything from denims to satins.

Sticking with fruit, in Kenya pineapple pulp waste is being converted into premium vegan leather by materials science company Eco Nasi. Apart from being cruelty-free, a big gain is that when the garment reaches end of life it biodegrades within six months. Eco Nasi collects unwanted pineapple leaves from farms and then processes them to extract fibres which can be cleaned and dried before being spun into yarn woven to produce the fake leather. If the global fungal protein and material market is a mystery to you, at least know that it’s ‘mushrooming’.

Mycelium is the big thing here, even if we’re talking tiny threads in its natural form. It too is being used to make artificial lab-grown leather, but there’s much more.

Netherlands-based biomaterial technology company Mycotex, for instance, is confident mycelium-based textiles and furnishings have a big future.

One of the issues with some past ‘cruelty-free’ synthetic options is that they are now shedding microplastics into the environment at alarming rates. If the use of organic materials brings that to an end, all of us on this planet – including the animals – will gain.

We’ve only touched the surface in this article. Everything from bamboo to seaweed is more than under the microscope as science and AI take us into a new world of garment production. How about textiles which have been engineered using modified squid genes so that if the garment ‘spots’ a small tear it can mend itself? Not fanciful, scientists actually announced that bit of magic a decade ago.

Whatever next will be coming across your counter?

Janice Raycroft

Tasty… but can you spot the artificial leather?

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