Fabric history and modern reinventionfrom @frontoffice.co

Transcript

This is Duck canvas. It is a 400 year old sailcloth. And now is in the middle of a very competitive industry trying to analyze, recreate, and innovate the next version of this cloth. Originally, it's used by Dutch sailors in the sixteen hundreds. And duck refers to duk, the Dutch word for linen cloth. I'll tell you how to weave it. It's a plain weave. So you have yarns going top to bottom and you have yarns going side to side. Warp and the weft. Duck cloth has two yarns going in this top down direction. And it's very tightly woven, very dense. I know how to weave it. Now you know how to weave it. The secret's out. So what's all the fuss about? So in the modern textile world, the race is on to create unique versions of this cloth. So these are the things that you can change. So you take a look at the type of yarn. Yarn is twisted fiber. How tightly do you twist it? How many turn? Which direction do you twist it in? And you can change what fiber you use in the first place. The original sailcloth was linen. Now cotton is more common. You can blend linen and cotton. Or you could use other things, hemp, nylon. And once you're done, you can treat the cloth with various treatment. You can wax the fabric like in barber jacket. Every unique combination of yarns, twists, fibers discovers a new thing, discovers a softer hand feel, enhanced durability, or a new look to the fabric. And brands are claiming their own signature fabric. Like Carhartt has their signature Dearborn canvas. Like Tier Island has a raw linen canvas that they coat with a dyed resin. So we have companies looking worse, we also have companies looking back. And there is a deep subculture of Japanese companies trying to recreate old military fabrics. Historical cloth. The fabric used during Worse War II was really known for its durability, for its consistency. And those are things that we in modern times really treasure as well. When I was in Japan, I found two competing companies, two Japanese mills, offering their own competing reproductions of nineteen tier Bulgarian military cloth. Like, that's happening today. So the textile industry is like this really fascinating blend of old and new. On one rank, there's innovation and creativity. On the other hand, there's like deep analysis, deep research to preserve what had come before, and both contribute to a very energetic industry.