Eco-Fashion: Clothing with Style and Concern

We are the children of nature and just like we have some responsibility towards our parents, we do have some towards earth and its environment too. The least we can do to show our concern is to go green while living our life. One of the most widely used daily items are our clothing. While we cannot dictate the terms to apparel, clothing and garments companies about manufacturing their products yet we can contribute in changing their minds about using eco- friendly raw materials and processes. We can go for green apparels!

While going green, do we have to sacrifice style and wear whatever is available? No! Today, many fashion designers have also become responsible and are adopting eco- friendly clothing lines. So, now we can get fashion clothing that is environmental friendly too! But do the tags saying “Eco- Clothing” are enough to identify such garments? Are there other facts too that can be known and checked while going for eco- fashion? Of course there are! Here are some ways to make a green wardrobe.

Earth-Friendly Fabrics: There are three categories of such fabrics. One, fabrics made from recycled materials such as fleece that is made from used plastic bottles. Two, the natural fabrics but natural is not enough, they have to be organic or renewable too. If you opt for traditional cotton, it is grown with tons of pesticides and processed with even more chemicals. Organic cotton can be the answer to this. Other natural fabrics like wool, linen, and silk that are renewed with organic makeover so as to make them less toxic to the environment, can also be used. Third, Renewable fabrics, in the sense that the source of such fabrics can be replenished easily, such as bamboo, jute, soy or corn fabrics. Fabrics like polyester or nylon are not renewable as their source, petroleum and its products, take millions of years to get created.

Eco- friendly laundering: Researches have shown that the fault does not, so much, lies with the construction and distribution of garments but the way they are cleaned. Washing clothes can consume a lot of water, energy and chemicals. Go for green threads, the one that can be cold washed and line dried. Learn how to eco- laundry.

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Home Furnishings: Present Day Trends

Home Textiles have always been important for providing comfort, protection and decoration of home interiors. Fashions keep on changing but the styles and fabrics used for home furnishings rotate in a cyclic manner. As a result of significant developments, consumers have a wide variety of choice to be made from among fiber combinations, fabrics, designs, textures and colors. There are conventional fabrics and patterns as well as modern performance fabrics that are antimicrobial, stain and fire resistant as well as fragrance encapsulating and environmental friendly. So, what are the present trends regarding interior furnishings. Come, let's explore!

Eco-friendly furnishings: People these days are becoming more and more environmental conscious having preference for naturally occurring options such as soy-based cushions or upholstery made of recycled polyester. Cotton, jute, bamboo fiber, and other such natural fabrics are extensively used for various furnishings such as bed linen, table linen, carpets and rugs.

Vintage home furnishings: One of the styles making way into people's home is that of antiquity. Not only people are preferring antique furnitures but also opting for vintage and royal fabrics like cashmere bed throw or silk comforter and duvets.

Embellished furnishings: Decoration is associated with beauty and whatever is beautiful, is liked by people. Traditional embellishments such as sequins and fur along with contemporary over- scale prints, graphic designs, all are in vogue.

Functional Home Furnishings: It's not like that people are only concerned about the beauty aspect of the home furnishings. They pay equal attention to functional aspects too. Now all home dwellers, most of them health conscious, want such performance fabrics for home furnishings that have antimicrobial and hypoallergenic properties, and that can regulate temperature as well. Durable and easy to clean fabrics are the choice of the present day.

That was a little effort to find about the fabrics that are mostly preferred by people at large for home furnishing purpose. There are other interior decor trends too, like color, wall furnishings, flooring, lighting etc. that need equal amount of attention so that homes may become truly welcoming!

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Private Labeling – Textile Service Providing Customized Clothing

If you love to dress up in quality clothings, it's more than likely that you fall for established brands most of the time. However, sometimes, it might happen that you could not find anything fulfilling your specific requirements. What do you do then? Do you change your requirements and compromise with the features available in the brands of your choice? More often you might be doing so because you are not prepared to compromise with the quality with which your brand is associated. But hold on, there's another option for you in such a situation. You can go for clothing lines with private label branding!

What is Private Labeling?

Private label products are manufactured by one company to be sold in the market under other company's brand. In garments business, they are clothing with a label exclusive to a store or a chain of stores. These clothings can be designed by retailer's in-house designers or by outside manufacturers. There are many textile services available these days. One of such service is that of private labeling. The firms engaged in providing private labels, help the retailers in customizing their clothing lines for their specific groups of consumers. The stores know their target market and its requirements through constant research. In fact, many of them have their own product evaluation centers that talk to shoppers about their present and future needs.

How are customers benefited?

Consumers get to select quality clothing at much lower prices as compared to manufacturers' established brands and that too without waiting for any discounts or promotional pricing. To eliminate all doubts about quality, some stores keep others brands too with their private labeled clothing. When the customers compare the two and see that they can save significantly and also get equivalent and sometimes better quality, they prefer to buy the private labeled clothing. Moreover, the retailer's name or symbol assures that the product meets the retailer's quality standards and specifications. Although the concept of private labeling was more prevalent in food products and other health & beauty products and it's comparatively new to the clothing business, yet it's making big in this sector, growing day by day. More and more store brand clothing lines are expected in this year 2009.

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Environmental Friendly Chitin- Its Application In Textile Industry

There are certain natural substances that are used widely in textile industry. The most common ones are cotton, wool, jute, silk etc. that are used for making various textile products including apparel garments. There are other items like natural dyes made from herbs and other natural ingredients. There are many others that are not very common in public knowledge but very useful for the fabric companies is one of such naturally occurring substances that is used in the textile finishing processes for improving the quality of finished fabric. It is present in the outer skeleton of insects, crabs, shrimps, and lobsters. It is a polymer, abundantly available in nature, only second to cellulose. From chitin is obtained chitosan. The primary source of chitin and chitosan is the shrimp and crabs industry for which they are wastes. Apart from textile industry, chitin is also used in other industries such as health and beauty, water purification, biomedical applications, agriculture, biotechnology, and nutrition.

In textile industry, chitosan is used in pretreatment and finishing processes of textiles. As it is biodegradable and is distributed into the environment in a dispersed manner, it has come up as an environmental alternative for the textile chemical companies who have to meet certain guideline while manufacturing textile chemicals for protecting environment. Chitin is used both for pretreatment as well as after treatment of fabrics. During pretreatment process, it is used on yarns before the yarn is woven into fabric. Alternatively it used in pretreatment of fabrics having neps on them. Neps are the small knots or fiber entanglements on the surface of fabrics and appear as white specs on the surface of dyed fabric, especially cotton and wool. The fiber with neps is pretreated with a mixture of chitosan, a non-ionic wetting agent, and sodium sulfate. It increases the dyeing ability of direct and reactive dyes and eliminates differences in color between dyed immature and mature fibers thus improving the quality of overall fabric. When applied in after treatment process, chitin is used for covering neps on rejected fabric's surface. This process also results in all those benefits that are obtained from pretreatment of fabric with chitin.

Now the only hindrance that remains in the way of its popularity is that the textile manufacturers are not aware of the benefits accruing from chitins application. Awareness about chitin- the eco friendly textile finish, is essential so that it finds its due place in the textile industry.

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New Smart Fabrics for New Year

Fresh and New Year 2009 is here! I wish you all a very happy and prosperous new year! New is always charming, always better from the old. Something new is being developed at every moment- a new life, a new song, a new dish, a new cloth! From being made from natural fibers like cotton, jute and wool, the fabric companies introduced new clothes made of synthetic fibers. Then these synthetic fabrics were improvised upon and introduced with new features for comfort in all seasons- warm fabrics for winters, cool fabrics for summer and water repellent fabrics for rainy season. Now with all its research and development, textile industry has introduced new and innovative smart fabrics- the hi- tech textile. Let's have a look on some of the new textiles in this new year!

New Electronic Wearables

Health Smart fabrics: Fabrics enriched with vitamins, algae or nutrients spare us from taking them orally. Electrical wearable are also there for tracking heart rate, ECG & body temperature or warn against allergy causing elements. This is not all, smart bras can detect breast cancer at early stages. Now these doctors in form of fabrics can be with us all the time! Some fabric companies are researching for sensors which can measure conductivity, electrolyte level, temperature and pH of the users' sweat, so very useful for sportswear.

Heat Modifying Textiles: No need of different clothes for different seasons now. Heat Modifying fabrics can make the heat pass out when body gets hot and as it gets cold, they keep back the heat. Some of them are made with electric wiring to regulate the body temperature. Researches are on for Inherently Conductive Polymers (ICP) so that fabric can make the body warm or cold without any electrical wiring, lets see whether we can wear it in 2009!

Interesting Smart Wearables: Forget those anti bacterial ointments and powders, just wear underpants treated with silver for permanent anti-bacterial treatments and also get rid from odor. If you have that common embarrassing problem of emitting gas, then wear underpants that filter out the smell of emitted gas through a triangular pocket strategically placed over the bottom containing carbon for filtering out smelly gases.

Progress is not only made in the field of electronic wearables, smart products too are there for your convenience. Get a new smart fabric keyboard this year and roll up to keep it in your pocket. Use it with your pocket PC or blueberry. Now your office moves with you! Are you a music enthusiast, get a bag made of smart fabric and operate your MP3 in bag through its straps, keep your hands free for other works! There are many more smart fabric products for your use. So, what are you getting this new year!

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