WW2 Births Modern-Day Textiles?War-Tme Designers- Part 5

Continuing with the effect of WW2 on fashion, today I’ll share excerpts regarding textile development of those years from the thesis Meghan Mason.  You can find her complete thesis at this link.   To be clear with what I’m quoting, I’ve set Meghan’s words in italics.

Synthetic Revolution

The new fabrics created during this time are still used today in clothing, household, mechanical, and everyday items. This period in history and the needs it presented are responsible for the innovative research and creation of materials used to help the war effort and also ones that consumers could not conceive of not using today.

Stephen Fenichell notes in his book Plastic: the first plastics were made from cellulosepure vegetable fibers.

Henry Ford made plastics from soybeans.

In the 1920’s Germans made plastic from cows blood which came from abattoirs (9).

The term “plastic” was derived from the Latin plasticas which means “that may be molded.” Plastic came to be a term that encompassed any group of synthetic or semi-synthetic polymers which were usually known also by their brand name (e.g. Rayon, Nylon, Bakelite, etc.)

Enter:  Viscose/ Rayon

Synthetic materials were not completely new to the world. At the end of the 19th century, in 1855, Viscose was created. It was the first “man-made” fiber and was patented in 1892. However, it is important to note that Viscose is not an entirely man-made sy