As you may have noticed, several of our pieces – for both summer and winter – feature fabric blends. Linen with cotton, cotton with hemp, cotton with linen AND ramie: the possibilities are endless across our entire collection. Far from a mere trend, blending fabrics to craft a garment is a technique designed to create a new type of textile with unique properties.
Blended fabrics were developed to meet specific needs, such as enhancing a garment's texture, lowering its production costs, and creating more durable pieces from natural fibres. Many advantages with very few drawbacks: here is everything you need to know.
Why blend different fibres?
Let's get back to basics. Creating a fabric involves several stages. First, harvesting the fibre, then spinning it into yarn, before finishing with the actual weaving or knitting. Cotton, for instance, comes from the cotton boll grown mainly in India, China, or Brazil, before being turned into a T-shirt. While many garments are made from a single fibre, such as 100% cotton or 100% linen, new, almost bespoke fabrics are emerging today that blend different fibres together.
This technique aims to offset certain downsides of a fabric or combine the distinct benefits of several textiles. There are widely used pairings, such as cotton and polyester, as well as more unique and unexpected blends, especially in luxury and haute couture. Today, brands are showing boundless creativity to reinvent everyday silhouettes.
The result? Garments with a refined or entirely new hand and appearance. Adding cashmere to wool instantly makes a jumper softer, while blending cotton with a technical fibre is the perfect recipe for sportswear pieces.
Recycling materials
The technique of blending fabrics also raises a few questions regarding sustainability. Taking a garment's end of life into account is an integral part of a more responsible approach to fashion. When it comes to worn-out clothes, the ideal solution, rather than throwing them away, is naturally to take them to a sorting centre so they can be recycled.
For the material of an old garment to be used to make a new piece, it must undergo "garnetting", meaning the fibres are extracted to spin a new bobbin of yarn. In theory, only single-fibre textiles can be recycled this way, as most manufacturers cannot (yet) separate the different yarns within the same fabric. We do say "yet", because more and more machines are becoming capable of recycling blended textiles.
To recycle bi-material garments without having to discard them, it is also possible to focus on circularity. At brand level, this means using fabric offcuts to create new clothing – just as we do with our boxers made from fabric scraps. On our own scale, we can also give a T-shirt a second life by turning it into a cleaning rag, for example. This is known as "upcycling". But that is another story.
The Spring-Summer collection at Hast: unique fabrics for the season
This season, we designed pieces that blend different fibres – all of them natural. For our latest blue and white striped shirt, we blended a touch of linen with cotton to make it lighter and more breathable.
In the same way, we crafted our mustard overshirt in a 55% linen and 45% cotton blend. Sébastien, designer at Hast, explains: "Blending linen and cotton helps keep linen's natural creasing under control. Cotton brings softness, a distinct feel, and a unique touch to the garment."
Likewise, for our pleated trousers, we chose a blend of hemp and cotton. Hemp, a very lightweight fabric, is perfect for summer and adds drape to this statement piece. Hemp is also one of the most environmentally friendly natural fibres on the textile market, requiring very little water to grow. Highly durable, it is a fabric that extends the lifespan of any garment.
Blending fibres to elevate a garment's quality: that is the thinking behind our new summer pieces. A bit like a classic vanilla-strawberry ice cream cone.
