Ingeo (pronounced IN-gee-oh) is just one of the ecologically friendly fabrics that Loudermilk is using for jeans, tights and jersey tops for its spring 2007 season. To solve the melting problem, Ms. Yuan now thinks she will have to change the seams in the blouse so the garment will never need ironing. "I have to work the kinks out," she says.

For the fashion industry, it isn't easy being green. Designers from Katharine Hamnett and Stella McCartney to Eileen Fisher and Rogan Gregory are marketing chemical-pesticide-and-insecticide-free cotton in their apparel. Nordstrom Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. use it in their private-label brands. Giorgio Armani, which already sells hemp shorts and sweaters, introduced a corn-fiber knit shirt this spring. "Ecologically responsible and technically advanced," the shirt's hangtag says. "Derived from 100% renewable natural resources and fully biodegradable."

But as Ms. Yuan learned, some new all-natural fabrics, such as corn fiber, can't survive hot irons. Others, like bamboo, don't take abrasion well and can stretch out. Banana fiber works well for hats but is itchy when used in clothing.

Deborah Milner, a designer in London, has a grant from Aveda, a unit of Estée Lauder Cos., to produce a line of eco-friendly couture gowns. The centerpiece of her collection, which will debut at Rome's haute couture show this summer, is a $14,700 "lace" bridal dress made with Swarovski crystals and 100 melted, recycled plastic bags. But Ms. Milner discovered she couldn't sew the plastic lace without creating small, unwanted holes in it. Her solution was to mount the lace on netting, so it would stay together, at least for the time being.

When Linda Loudermilk began to work with all-natural bamboo fabric two years ago, she created a couple of prototype shirts to test them out. One disintegrated in the wash. "That particular weave of bamboo we found would, umm, fall apart," Ms. Loudermilk says. A bamboo shirt, hung on a hanger, would stretch out and become a dress overnight. After organic cotton or wool was added to the fabric and the weave was changed, garments stood up better, she says. Today, the company is using the bamboo blend for honeycomb knit T-shirts, among other pieces.

Despite hitches, ecologically friendly fabrics are making inroads. Organic cotton is more available and of better quality than it was in the early 1990s. Big manufacturers are using it, and Levi Strauss & Co. is expected to announce next week that it will begin to make Levi's jeans with organic cotton and other environmentally correct materials such as recycled-metal and natural-wood buttons.

Fleece made from recycled plastic pop bottles is in widespread use. And clothing manufacturers often use Tencel, a man-made fabric using cellulose found in wood pulp. Tencel can be found in everything from dresses to pajamas.

"The last time fabrics were this interesting was back in the 1960s when they were entirely unnatural, synthetic, and made in test tubes," says David Wolfe, creative director at the Doneger Group, a fashion consultancy.

Still, many designers say there is a long way to go. Ms. Hamnett, the London designer, dismissed bamboo because chemicals are needed to break down the pulp into fiber. "We've looked at all the sustainable materials and found them failing, except for organic cotton, really," she says.

Even that has its drawbacks. Because organic cotton is in short supply, Ms. Hamnett had to look far and wide for enough luxury-quality fabric to launch her spring/summer 2007 line. Designers have to deal with the fact that clothes made entirely of cotton can stretch out, lose shape and take forever to dry. They often add synthetics like Lycra to speed drying time and keep shape -- which purists like Ms. Hamnett claim defeats the whole purpose. Yet even she found that she had to add elastic to underwear and sweatpants. "We're trying to use as little as possible," she says.

Prewashing organic cotton is also fraught with environmental peril. To soften denim and give it a vintage look, designers must subject the jeans to a battery of harsh chemicals, or use pumice, a volcanic rock extracted from mines that some deem ecologically unacceptable.

So Howies, a British jeans producer, came up with an alternative: Use old golf balls in the wash cycle. But they didn't create enough friction, says David Hieatt, Howies co-founder. After an hour of washing, the jeans came out looking almost the same as they had looked unwashed. Howies ultimately found a German company making a rubberized ball called the "Eco-Ball." The Eco-Balls now give Howies denim the appearance of "a very light stone wash," says Melanie Farmer, a Howies production manager, and allow the company to boast its jeans were "eco-ball washed for softness."

// posted by fiftyRX3 @ 6/16/2006