Hello, Lyocell? You’re pretty spiffy

I recently bought this nice little short sleeve jersey top at Jacob after a frustrating and bored bout of window shopping. I have been in desperate search for some knitwear for winter, but so far yielded extreme polarities: soft and cuddly= expensive. Anything of cheaper pricing left me with goosebumps as my skin grated the unruly texture of cheap knitwear.

Until I came upon an uber soft fabric while browsing through Jacob. I liked how the fabric draped so well but most of all, felt so soft to touch. I checked the label and it said 95% Lyocell, a fabric I wasn’t familiar with, and 5% spandex. It had a slight sheen to it and was very comfortable to wear. I bought it for $40.

I did some research on Lyocell to see what would pop up and shot an email to Fabrics.net to find out more. It’s a fabric closely associated to rayon, made of wood pulp (pictured above), and is said to be more expensive as the chemicals and solvents used to make the fabric are environmentally friendly. Best of all, it’s a fabric that doesn’t wrinkle as much and isn’t affected by washing (yay!).

According to Wisegeek, lyocell was said to be quite expensive, pricing at about $100 due to its manufacturing method and because only one US company, Tencel, makes the fabric in North America. Fabrics.net refutes that prices have gone down since its inception and noted that price should not determine the quality of fabric.

This little research brought into light a couple of questions:

If price doesn’t really determine the quality of fabric, how can you tell if a fabric is of good quality or not over time?

So far in my on-going quest for quality, I have encountered some of the finest fabrics ever made at Pellegrino Castronovo. Worsted fabrics made of silky Vecuna wool, Mohair, Merino and some sort of rare bison/buffalo wool only found in the far north that shot up the price to the sky heavens. Cotton so fine that it actually had a slight sheen to it. All of these came from the best fabric manufacturers from Europe like Dormeuil, Zegna, Scabal, etc. But for women, it’s always been a trickier business. I currently don’t have a mentor to teach me about quality fabrics in women’s wear, but it would be fascinating to study the ways of the cloth.

What does “environmentally friendly” or “organic” really mean in terms of fabrics?

I was told there are no current certification for organically made garments in the textile industry, therefore a heads up to shoppers: be aware of companies who claim to use organic cottons and fabrics. I hope in the near future there will be certification standards for this kind of practice. It would put at ease the minds of those who want to switch their shopping ways if something was certified.

My lyocell top is Made in China (though I believe a small percentage of Jacob’s line is Made in Canada), which could explain the relative cheap pricing, yet the fabric is really quite top notch in my book. We’ll see how this will fare after a few washings, but so far, $40 well spent.