POLYESTER: THE PEOPLE'S FABRIC
These are my new year's resolutions: 1. I will stop drinking coffee. 2. I will do my taxes . . . and I don't mean from '95, either. 3. I will buy no more polyester. I lasted until around six New Year's Day before a crippling headache made me give up on the first one, and my T4 is still languishing unopened at the bottom of a file somewhere, but I am proud to say, I have not yet bought a single polymer fibre.
Perhaps you don't understand: Things were spiralling out of control. I knew I needed to stop. My closet has reached saturation point. It's loud, it's bright, and to be honest, it's starting to look like a long-abandoned chemical research laboratory at DuPont. My roommates, who initially regarded my passion with fond (if confused) indulgence, were beginning to view my addiction with increasing horror. "How," asked one simply, "can you wear that stuff?"
"How? How?" she asks.
How, better to ask, could I not? Like everyone of my generation, I was first exposed to synthetics at a young and highly impressionable age. A child of the '70s, I went straight from my mother's womb into the warm, static- clinging embrace of a pink and white acrylic baby blanket. I sucked apple juice and formula from a synthetic nipple. My teething pains were soothed by a plastic pretzel pacifier. As I grew older, I played with plastic toys (This was perhaps the beginning of my plastic consciousness. How many of us can recall the disillusionment we felt upon discovering that Barbie's hair melted if you tried to curl it with the curling iron?), and wore polyester jumpsuits. Plastic was everywhere, and polyester was just another plastic.
My fashion choices were reinforced by my disco mom and the irrefutable authority of the television. The Partridge Family and the Bradys wore poly that many a vintage clothing store buyer would kill for, and Charlie's Angels gave it just the sheen of glamour it needed.
But, almost imperceptably, anti-poly forces were already at work. Three's Company's Mister Furley was inexplicably held up as an object of ridicule for his timeless leisure suit look, and Cal Worthington's infamous and highly memorable ad segments did little to salvage poly's waning reputation.
Even worse, the kids at school were starting to look down on poly. Eighties snobbery was trickling down all the way to the playground, and by junior high P-O-L-Y-E-S-T-E-R spelled social suicide. Poly had been unseated as the fabric of the people. Overwhelmed by the tide of public sentiment, I too turned my back on my roots and shunned the magical plastic fibre.
However, as we all know, that strange thing called fashion runs in 20 year cycles, which in practical terms means that a walk down Granville street results in sightings of at least a dozen kids who could have been Greg or Marcia's study date. Vintage clothing stores are overflowing with genuine polyester relics of days gone by (looking, amazingly, as new as they did the day they were made), and even Robson Street boutiques have come up with their own versions-if you think $60 isn't too much to spend on a shirt your Grandma would give you for free.
No longer all that young, but still, sadly, a reed in the wind of public sentiment, I was once again swept away by that old polyester magic. And it is a miraculous fabric, it must be admitted. Virtually indestructable, it doesn't shrink, fade, or wrinkle. You'll never, ever need to dry clean it, and ironing is not only unnecessary, but highly inadvisable- like Barbie's hair, it might melt. Indeed, you needn't even put it in the dryer. Water repellant, polyester dries in the blink of an eye, meaning you can put it on straight from the washer. Just think of the energy savings!
On a similar note, since it lasts forever, it's the ideal clothing choice for environmentalists, a fact which most have been mystifyingly slow to pick up on. If you ignore the fact that it's a petroleum product, the environmental benefits become dazzlingly clear. Polyester lasts forever: if no new clothing were ever made, there would still be enough poly to clothe an entire continent comfortably until the end of human existence.
So, when faced with these overwhelmingly poslitive qualities, how can one be cured of the polyester plaglue? Once again, I decide to take a scientific approach. As I child, I stopped eating bacon after I found out that it came from pigs (it took me a little longer to realize that all meat came from animals). Might I not also quit polyester, if I knew exactly where it came from?
It was at this point that I discovered mainstream society's conspiracy to erase polyester from the collective consciousness. A trip to the SFU library yielded little information. I then tried a Web-search . . . Nothing. Frustrated, I try the public library, where I have only marginally more luck.
I look through textile books, but they offer only cursory information on the fabric in question. Then I try looking for books on 20th century fashion history, and discover that while every other decade, including the 80s, has at least one book devoted to it, there is a curious void surrounding the 70s.
Frustrated, I consult a librarian, who is equally confused by the dearth of poly-mation. However, I have stumbled upon a pro: an hour later she emerges from some back-room hidden deep within the bowels of the Coliseum . . . er, I mean VPL. She is holding the key to the mystery. The missing link. A small pamphlet, published by Goodyear in 1978, titled, "Polyester: a story of high fashion and high perfomance." (Goodyear manufactures polyester, and uses it to make tires.)
Polyester, I learn, "was the man-made fiber that almost got away." Development of polyester began with Dr. Wallace Carothers of DuPont in the early 1930s. However, Dr. Carothers abandoned his work to concentrate on nylon. However, the folks at Goodyear proclaim, "fortunately for the world," the torch was picked up by an English company, British Calico Printers. At this point, the race to discover polyester began to resemble the scramble to discover the A- bomb, as Goodyear and "the Britishers" frantically tried to beat each other to the polyester promised land. Alas for Yankee pride, the British won this round . . . but hey, at least it wasn't the commies.
Well okay. Besides the fact that I'm supporting multinational conglomerates, there's nothing too bad about this so far. Ickiness, however, begins with the next section, "How Polyester is Made." According to Goodyear, polyester is turned into a resin (meaning little chips), "through a chemical process called polymerization, which combines terephthalic acid (a coal tar derivative), and ethylene glycol (anti-freeze)." Yes, that's right, tar and anti-freeze.
The resin is then melted and "extruded through a spinerette into continuous polyester fibres." Once it's a fibre, it can be processed in a number a different ways to produce the fabric desired, e.g. blended with cotton or wool, or crimped to give that oh-so-fashionable woven effect.
So, now I know the facts. But, to be honest, not even the tar and anti-freeze bit is enough to turn me off poly forever. There's too much histoty behind our relationship. Like the indestructible wunderfibre itself, the bond that holds us together cannot be dissolved so easily.
Besides, resolutions are made to be broken, or else why would we have to make them again every year?
I should probably still do my taxes though . . .
current
issue
past issues
search
contact
