You may have noticed that some of our pieces, both summer and winter, feature compositions that mix materials. Linen with cotton, cotton with hemp, cotton with linen AND ramie, the possibilities are endless and are available throughout our collection. More than just a trend, mixing fabrics to design a garment is a technique used to create a new type of textile with unique properties.
Blended materials have been developed to meet specific needs, such as improving the texture of the garment, reducing its production cost but also producing more durable pieces, from natural fibers. Many advantages for few disadvantages, we explain the why and how.
Why do we mix materials?
Let's get back to basics. Creating a fabric requires several steps. First, the collection of a fiber, then its transformation into thread before ending with the actual manufacturing. Cotton, for example, comes from the cotton flower that grows mainly in India, China or Brazil, before being transformed into a t-shirt. While many clothes are made from a single material, such as 100% cotton or 100% linen, there are now new fabrics, made almost to measure, that mix different fibers.
This technique aims to compensate for certain negative properties of a fabric or to combine the different advantages of several fabrics together. There are very common combinations, such as the alliance of cotton and polyester or others more original and unexpected, particularly in the world of luxury or haute couture. Brands are now competing in inventiveness to renew the appearance of our silhouettes.
The result? Clothes with a touch and visual rendering that are often optimized or new. Adding cashmere to wool will imtely make a sweater softer, just as mixing cotton with a more technical material will be the right recipe for producing pieces of the sportswear wardrobe.
Recycle the material
The technique of mixing materials also raises some questions in terms of sustainability. Taking into account the end of life of the garment is an integral part of a more responsible approach to fashion. As for used clothes, the ideal, rather than throwing them away, is obviously to drop them off at a sorting center, in order to have them recycled.
For the material from a used garment to be used to make a new piece, it must be "defibered", that is to say extracted to recreate a new spool of thread. In theory, only single-material textiles can then be recycled, since most manufacturers are not (yet) able to separate the threads of the same fabric. We say "yet", because more and more machines are capable of defibering textiles with mixed materials.
To recycle bi-material clothing, without having to throw it away, it is also possible to favor circularity. At the brand level, this involves using fabric scraps to create new clothing - as we do with our underwear made from fabric scraps. On our scale, we can also give a new life to a t-shirt by transforming it into a rag, for example. This is called "revaluation". But that's another subject.
The spring-summer collection at Hast: unique materials for the season
This season, we've designed pieces that combine different fibers - all natural. For our latest white and blue striped shirt , we've added a bit of linen to the cotton to make this piece more breathable and lightweight.
Similarly, we designed our mustard overshirt in a combination of 55% linen and 45% cotton. Sébastien, stylist at Hast, explains: “Mixing linen and cotton allows you to better control the wrinkled side of linen. Cotton brings softness, a different feel and taste to the garment.”
Also, for the pleated pants , we chose a blend of hemp and cotton. Hemp, a very light fabric, is perfect for summer and brings fluidity to this strong piece. Hemp is also one of the most ecological natural materials on the textile market, because it consumes very little water for its production. Very resistant, it is a fabric that increases the durability of a piece.
Mixing materials to increase the quality of a garment: this is how we imagined the new summer pieces . A bit like a good vanilla-strawberry ice cream cone.
