Taiwan textile Federation

As a young student in 1989, fashionista Suzanne Lee hated science. After years of suffering through labs and tests in high school, the 19 year old Brit fled for art school, soon snuggling into a world of silk, seams, and buckles. But in 2003, while researching a book on future technologies of fashion, Lee bumped into a scientist at an art gallery in London. The chance meeting led to a discussion on the fashion industry's lack of sustainability, and how science, once Lee's arch-nemesis, might be eco friendly textile the industry's best hope.

BioBiker: Vegetable leather jacket
with black oxidation 'print'
Copyright of the BioCouture Project 2010


eco friendly textile "Textiles for clothing is one of the most polluting industries," says Lee, now a senior research fellow at the School of Fashion & Textiles at the Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design in London. Fashion labels typically invest slim to no money in research, she says, and are resistant to change, so it's up to designers to find and promote eco-friendly, high-tech alternatives. In an effort to lead the way, in 2003 Lee founded BioCouture, a fledgling research project proposing a futuristic fashion vision -- growing garments from vats of bacteria.

Today, Lee produces eerily beautiful jackets, dresses, and kimonos by culturing and shaping bacterial cellulose. The raw material for the clothing is grown for two weeks in a sugary green tea solution rich with bacteria and yeast. As the solution ferments, the microbes slowly excrete a sticky mat, forming a layer about 15mm thick. Lee carefully removes the layer, washes it in cold water, and spreads it on a flat wooden surface or smooth wooden mold to dry. Once all the water has evaporated, she peels the "textile," a stretchy, leather-like material, from the surface and cuts and sews it by hand. In an effort to avoid damaging the material with chemicals in dyes, Lee often colors it with fruit and vegetable stains. "Blueberry skins and beetroot work best," she says.

In the past seven years, Lee had made around 10 garments, many which have been on display at places like London's Science Museum. Though she has yet to gain the widespread acceptance of the fashion community -- "Fashion designers are fine about it as a material until you show how it's made and then they think it's somehow gruesome," she says -- Lee has become an eager recruit to the scientific community.

eco friendly textile Early on in the inception of BioCouture, Lee partnered with David Hepworth, a materials scientist she met in the museum, and they began to informally explore the idea by growing bacterial cellulose in his garage and her bathroom. Today, to improve upon that process, Lee collaborates with researchers at Imperial College London.



Cellulose naturally absorbs water, which doesn't make it an ideal material to sport on a rainy day. "The [cellulose] clothing takes up huge amounts of water and swells, making wearing it a bit unpleasant," says Alexander Bismarck, an Imperial College materials scientist. Rather than chemically altering the cellulose after it has been made, a tedious and not particularly eco-friendly process, Bismarck and Lee, along with Paul Freemont, head of molecular biosciences at Imperial College, are trying to modify the bacteria or growth medium directly to make the cellulose more hydrophobic. It hasn't been easy, says Bismarck: There's a fine line between clothes that turn to goo in the rain and clothes with no moisture absorption all. "Hopefully we will be able to produce a leather-like material from cellulose that has [appropriate] properties for the fashion world," says Bismarck. "I believe, a couple of years down the line, there will be a market for it."

Though Lee's clothing is not ready for that market quite yet -- despite a deluge of requests, she does not currently sell her creations -- she says she wants to make an impression on the next generation of designers. "I hope that BioCouture serves to at least raise people's awareness to a different way of thinking -- that [the fashion industry] should look to science for the solutions to our problems," says Lee. "We have really only just begun to imagine what we might grow using this process!"

And Lee's changing her tune with regard to her previous distaste for science. "I went to art school to escape science, only to find that the most exciting creative thinking right now is emerging from science," she laughs.

Read more: Haute culture - The Scientist - Magazine of the Life Sciences http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/57604/#ixzz0vWqRrLAn

Fabric application demand has increased to 325 million square meters in 2005, and 83 tons of fibre, mostly nylon has been used.
The world eco friendly textile airbag market is estimated to rise from 66 million units in 1996 to over 200 million units in 2006, a compound annual growth rate of 12 per cent. Over this decade, Europe will put in 60 million units, Asia-Pacific 30 million units and North America 24 million units.
While North American and Western European eco friendly textile markets are growing, considerable development is also seen in the international eco friendly textile market. As new applications are developing for eco friendly textile airbags, including rear seat bags, inflatable seat belts and an outside airbag system for pedestrians, new fabrics and combinations are being applied. The front and passenger bags have different requirements because of the distance from the occupant, but they both have rapid increment and deflation in a very short time span.
Rollover eco friendly textile bags must remain inflated for five seconds. In addition to new uses, expected trends include lighter fabric for use with newer “cold inflators,” blended with eco friendly textile materials like fabric and film, new coating polymers (Silicone now dominates having replaced neoprene).

Suzani comes from the Persian word for "needle," and the word refers to embroidered hangings or fabric coverings, generally a meter and a half wide (4-5') but sometimes much more. The birthplace of suzani is in what is now Uzbekistan, the area along the Silk Roads that interconnected the cultures of Europe, Turkey and China with the Muslim world. Islam came to this area in the eighth century, and over time splendid cities arose there: among them Bukhara, Samarkand, Shakhrisabz and Khiva.

Central Asia has always been a land of textiles. The lives of nomads and settled peoples alike have always been hard, and the landscape is often bleak, but women have long decorated every object they could-prayer rugs, saddlecloths, cradle covers, mirror cases, yurt bands, tent flaps, salt bags and gift wraps-with weaving, embroidery and applique in wool, silk, cotton or felt.

As children, nomad and village girls alike began putting together dowries to show the community their skill and industriousness, and throughout their lives their textiles were a principal means of expression and of control of their immediate environment, be it a house, a tent or a yurt. The textiles were also, if needed, an economic resource, for fine pieces could be sold, and city people often commissioned work from the village women.

Homes became veritable cocoons of splendid textiles that were not only functional and beautiful, but also served as status symbols and links to history. Many patterns that are now largely abstract, or so stylized as to seem abstract, have very old roots, for they can be seen on finds in the tombs of Pazyryk, in the permafrost of the High Altai, which date back to the first millennium BC.

Throughout Central Asia, individual regions developed their distinctive designs, for this part of the world is a human as well as a topographical patchwork: Khazakhs, Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, Turkomans, Lakai and Arabs live there and, within those groups, each tribe had its gol, or crest, with colors and motifs that were recognizable at a marketplace or on pilgrimage. Client tribes placed the gol of their protector more prominently than their own and, as with western heraldry, in these crests could be read the past history and the present "pecking order" of the steppe.

Most of the suzani surviving today, however, are village or urban works, and though scholars often divide them into "eastern" and "western" on the basis of design and color, less is known about suzani than about other textiles from the region. Except at a few museums, suzani have been little studied because, traditionally, they were made in the home for personal use and asia textile thus rarely appeared in the written records of merchants or travelers.

The oldest surviving suzani are from the late 18th and early 19th centuries, but it seems likely that they were in use long before that. Writing at the beginning of the 15 th century, the Spanish ambassador to the court of Timur (Tamerlane) left detailed descriptions of the royal tents, with their hangings and embroideries, that agree precisely with the scenes depicted in miniature paintings of the period. (See "The Ambassador's Report," page 10.) Some of the textiles the envoy saw were surely the forerunners of the suzani, particularly the densely worked pieces from Bukhara and Shakhrisabz, some of which have much to say to the medallion carpets of the Timurid period that are associated with Herat, to the south in Afghanistan.

It is interesting that in the 1780's, the time of the first surviving suzani, Haji Murad, the emir of Bukhara, decided to revive the silk industry by planting mulberry trees north of the city and bringing in skilled workers from the Merv oasis to the west. This may well have resulted in renewed suzani production and given rise to the pieces known to museums and textile historians today.

The motifs on the suzani go back much further, however, and they are linked to trade. The wealthy families of the cities of the Silk Roads and of the Khanates of Bukhara and Khokand had long had contact with the textiles of India, China and Persia, as well as decorative motifs from the West. Since the time of Alexander, Hellenic influences have reached well into Central Asia, and from there, Hellenic motifs moved along the Silk Roads to appear in embroidered hangings found in many oasis towns and, finally, in the ceramics of Ming China. The vine pattern that, highly stylized, meanders along the border of so many suzani was quite likely inspired by the scrolls of grapes found across the Hellenic world on stone, ceramics and textiles. Equally old and well-traveled is the palmetto, a fan-shaped, stylized botanical motif from the Mediterranean that may also have been introduced in the wake of Alexander's conquests in India and Afghanistan.

The botah motif, shaped like a teardrop and perhaps a version of the "tree of life" design, reached this area from Persia as early as the fifth century BC. Other flowers that appear on suzani, including tulips and wild hyacinths, are not unlike those on Iznik plates, suggesting a Turkic origin. Sometimes there is a frilly flower often called a carnation, but it is more probably a pomegranate blossom, or a much-stylized lotus whose meaning as a Buddhist symbol has been forgotten in the centuries since the conversion of Central Asia to Islam.

These motifs are common among the western group of suzani, which often show the influence of textiles imported from Mughal India through Kashmir. Curiously enough, some of these patterns were also exported westward in the 17th century, where they became the basis for English Jacobean embroideries.

Although each Central Asian town had its own style, the place of manufacture of many suzani cannot be identified with certainty, simply because not enough is known. For example, Shakhrisabz, Timur's own city, is famous for the lushness of its vegetation and reflects this characteristic in the embroidered flowers and rich color range of its textiles-but similar pieces were made elsewhere. And the stitch known as kanda khayol, a slanted couching stitch, is most frequently found in Shakhrisabz embroideries-but is not unique to them.

Typical suzani from the small town of Nurata have a star in the center and scattered sprays of flowers, or sometimes botah, on the main field, which is usually naturally colored cotton or linen. The embroidery is generally in delicate shades, often muted indigos and rust. One Nurata nim suzani (a half-size suzani) has the classic sprays of flowers and a central star and then another motif, common in the region, that may represent either two little coffee pots or two ewers for rose water-in either case, symbols of hospitality, prosperity and joy.

Samarkand had been one of the largest towns in the world in 1400, but by the early 19th century its population had shrunk to some 8000 inhabitants. It is therefore not surprising that its embroideries are less sophisticated and-perhaps because it is close to the eastern area of suzani designs-bolder in their patterns. They are not infrequently worked on yellow, pink or purple backgrounds and often embroidered in a limited range of colors. The designs are almost abstract, as they are also in the Jizak asia textile area to the northeast, on the edge of the steppe.

Eastern suzani are much closer to the traditional nomad designs of the Kyrgyz and Uzbeks, who in pre-Islamic times worshiped the sun, the moon and the stars. These are bold designs, with an archaic symbolism centered on a circular motif, whose exact meaning is debated by specialists: Does it represent the sun, the moon, the heavens, a flower-or an open pomegranate, a symbol of fertility from the Mediterranean to China? It is clearly a positive image of continuity and survival, and it appears over and over again in the life of the region: It is painted or incised on the walls of houses, stamped onto bread, sewn into other embroideries used for everyday tableware, and even echoed in the brickwork of the domes of mosques and madrasas (religious schools). It often employs powerful contrasts, as if to distinguish dark and light, good and evil, life and death, and strong colors such as red for blood, brown for the earth and blue-black for the sky.

This symbolism is most clear in the suzani of the Tashkent, Pskent and Fergana Valley regions. They are hallmarked by a particular central roundel, known as the palak, which is so distinctive that the word itself is used at Tashkent instead of suzani to refer to these embroideries. A palak is a heavenly orb, and it can also appear as the oi-palak, "moon-sky," occasionally with a star, and is often stylized to look like giant red flowers. This flower-and-sun palak appears again and again, not only among the Central Asian nomads, but also in the embroideries of Rajasthan and Gujarat, in Kashmir and in Turkish-influenced pieces from the Balkans, and in all of these places it is a symbol of power and fertility.

The term palak likely comes from the Arabic falak, the celestial sphere, and the root in turn probably goes back to the Sumerian word for a spindle whorl, which of course rotates. The roundels on the suzani often contain six dots, sometimes with a seventh in the middle, and it has been suggested that these represent the seven planets, or perhaps the seven layers of the sky, an idea that has come down to our own day in the expression "seventh heaven."

Palak sometimes have a triangular motif in the corners, often called a "comb" or "earring," but close examination shows that it more probably represents an amulet case used to carry a written verse of the Qur'an. Although almost unrecognizable, birds are sometimes found in older pieces, probably intended to be the cock, the bringer of light and dispeller of darkness and a very important creature in Central Asian symbolism from earliest times. There is also a motif that looks like a scorpion-surely used prophylactically, to ward off these creatures. These are two of the few non-botanical motifs in eastern suzani.

In making a suzani, it was rarely the embroiderer herself who sketched the design. Most commonly, when a girl's dowry was being prepared, fabric would be taken to a kalamkash, an older woman who acted as the local designer. A similar system still obtains in the towns of northern India today, where there are often one or two elderly men in the cloth bazaars to whom women will bring lengths or panels of cloth. After much discussion of design elements and price, the pattern-sometimes very elaborate-is penned directly onto the fabric. As the silk wears away on a suzani, it is often possible to see these outlines.

suzani are characteristically worked on four to six narrow strips of cotton, linen or silk, which before 1900 were generally home-woven. After the design is drawn, the strips are divided up to be worked by different members of the family. As a result, the patterns of the suzani can appear slightly misaligned or asymmetrical, and it is not uncommon for the shades of color to vary from one strip to the next, for no two batches of natural dye come out exactly the same. Although this is less common in suzani from the 20th century that use aniline dyes, some women nonetheless embroidered personal touches that ignored the "official" color scheme, adding charm and personality to the work.

The stitches used for suzani are simple. There are two kinds of couching, basma and the slanting kanda khayol for filling; and a chain stitch (tambur) and a kind of double buttonhole stitch (ilmok) to work the outlines. The thread is normally silk, or sometimes cotton, and very rarely wool. In the older pieces, of course, natural dyes were used: indigo from India for blue, cochineal and madder for red, saffron from the wild crocus for yellow, pomegranate skins or pistachio galls with iron for black.

The background color of the earliest and finest pieces tends to be the natural cotton or linen; the use of colored grounds-yellow, pink, red or sometimes violet-seems to be a later development. Silk backgrounds are associated with certain nomad groups such as the Lakai and with the brilliantly colored, 20th-century embroideries still made in Afghanistan.

suzani are still made today, and recently they have become a commercially produced textile and less frequently a domestic one. Some background on the region's history sheds light on how this change came about.

As Timurid Central Asia was in its long decline, following the centuries that had seen the rise of the magnificent cities, the region caught the attention of Russia's Peter the Great in the late 17th century. Over the next 150 years, as local rulers battled each other, the Russian Empire and the nomads, the region also experienced a revival of Central Asian culture, especially at Bukhara, Khokand and Khiva. In the 19th century, the Russians were again looking east, and this time they took control of those khanates.

With Russian annexation and the industrial revolution, the already increasing pressure on agricultural land intensified. Many nomads settled, and in settling they began to lose and change their traditional skills. Others left for Afghanistan, Iran or the foothills of the Himalayas.

The Russians liked Central Asian textiles-carpets, gold embroidery and silks-and set up workshops to produce them for export. The resulting carpets, like those mass-produced for export today, tended, unsurprisingly, to be standardized and somewhat dull: The work was no longer a matter of pride, no longer something to be admired by the whole community and enjoyed for the rest of one's life, but only a way to make a bare living. suzani, however, were made at home, not in workshops, so they asia textilesuffered less than other crafts.

Dyeing, too, is a difficult and highly skilled trade, and in Central Asia it was a craft much practiced by Jews, who were beginning to leave under Russian rule. By the last quarter of the 19th century, as all over the East, brilliant but unstable and harsh artificial dyes were pouring out of tins and packets, and the associated drop in the quality of textile production was almost instantaneous. It is therefore easy to date suzani as being made before or after the introduction of modern dyes.

The Russian revolution of 1917 again threw Central Asia into turmoil. Under the Bolsheviks, textile production was further "rationalized," and more efforts were made to settle the nomads; meanwhile, many city people fled. Dowries were discouraged and lifestyles changed."Women were now more likely to embroider a chair cover than a saddlecloth. Patterns that for millennia had been deeply charged with meaning suddenly became mere design elements, ornamental, pretty or simply out-of-date. Yet embroidery continued, both as a government-organized craft and for the decoration of one's environment, for self-expression asia textileand for money.

Gradually, however, the new order affected even this. Education was compulsory, and now little girls had other things to do than needlework. Women were freer to work and express themselves in other ways. The generation of grandmothers for whom "every stitch was prayer" began to die out, and needlework became just one more element in a more complicated life, no longer a central one.

asia textileDespite this, a surprising number of suzani are still produced in independent Uzbekistan today, where they decorate homes, workplaces, teahouses and public buildings, and are still used at weddings and on festive occasions. They are for sale everywhere, bought by locals as well as visitors. Scraps of old ones may serve as a saddlecloth for one of the few remaining donkeys or as a tablecloth for a workman's lunch. Some are hand-embroidered, but others are machine-made. The colors may be influenced by imported textiles, and the current fashion in designs may not be as bold as in the past, but in this very recent form, the tradition of the suzani lives on.

Two is better than one: In addition to the Oeko-Texlogo, JAKO-O now adopts the bluesign standard with respect to the environmental friendliness of textile products. As Bettina Peetz, Director of JAKO-O states, "Clothing marked with the bluesign logo guarantees that the entire manufacturing process is not harmful to health AND is absolutely environmentally friendly." Through this, the catalog company for savvy children's items adopts its special responsibility for the future of children and the environment.

eco friendly textile According to Bettina Peetz, JAKO-O will continue to expand the choice of bluesign-certified products: "The goal is to have as much of our functional and outdoor collection certified as possible". Customers already see the "Oeko-Tex Standard 100" sign for textiles that do not pose a hazard to health on almost every piece of JAKO-O clothing. A great number of textiles even belong to Product Class 1 for baby products and with this, fulfill the strictest Oeko-Texrequirements.

eco friendly textile As Bettina Peetz, head of JAKO-O, emphasizes, "With the help of bluesign, we would like to convince our vendors of the benefits of saving scarce resources such as water and energy as well as replacing dangerous chemicals. In addition, production processes shall be optimized in order to reduce dangers for employees and customers".

JAKO-O continues its engagement in environmental and consumer protection through cooperation with bluesign: JAKO-O was certified according to the EC ECO-Audit Ordinance in 1999 as the first toy manufacturer. Together with TUV Rheinland, JAKO-O has also developed an expanded test program for material substances in shoes.

Environmental friendliness that carries logos: bluesign and Oeko-Tex

In contrast to Oeko-Tex Standard 100, in which the adherence of the limiting values for the chemicals that are used is checked, the end product is not the only thing evaluated by the bluesign standard. Rather, the entire production process is assessed - from the raw materials and the chemical components that are used through to the water and energy consumption and safety in the workplace. The bluesigncertificate is awarded independent of the manufacturers by Bluesign Technologies AG with registered office in Switzerland.

JAKO-O GmbH was founded in 1987 and belongs to the HABA corporate family in addition to the toy manufacturer, HABA, and the kindergarten and school furnisher, Wehrfritz. The owner and managing partner is Klaus Habermaass. Since 2004 JAKO-O has been developing new target groups with the Qiero! and FIT-Z sales divisions: While JAKO-O is aimed at children under 10 years of age, FIT-Z targets the youth ages of 10 to 16. Qiero! offers fashion for adults.

The HABA eco friendly textile corporate family employs approximately 1800 employees in Bad Rodach (Upper Franconia) in northern Bavaria. The entire HABA corporate family has been honored several times for its family friendly company policy with the 'Audit berufundfamilie ' certificate (German Career and Family Audit certificate), an initiative of the non-profit Hertie Foundation.

As a young student in 1989, fashionista Suzanne Lee hated science. After years of suffering through labs and tests in high school, the 19 year old Brit fled for art school, soon snuggling into a world of silk, seams, and buckles. But in 2003, while researching a book on future technologies of fashion, Lee bumped into a scientist at an art gallery in London. The chance meeting led to a discussion on the fashion industry's lack of sustainability, and how science, once Lee's arch-nemesis, might be eco friendly textile the industry's best hope.

BioBiker: Vegetable leather jacket
with black oxidation 'print'
Copyright of the BioCouture Project 2010


eco friendly textile "Textiles for clothing is one of the most polluting industries," says Lee, now a senior research fellow at the School of Fashion & Textiles at the Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design in London. Fashion labels typically invest slim to no money in research, she says, and are resistant to change, so it's up to designers to find and promote eco-friendly, high-tech alternatives. In an effort to lead the way, in 2003 Lee founded BioCouture, a fledgling research project proposing a futuristic fashion vision -- growing garments from vats of bacteria.

Today, Lee produces eerily beautiful jackets, dresses, and kimonos by culturing and shaping bacterial cellulose. The raw material for the clothing is grown for two weeks in a sugary green tea solution rich with bacteria and yeast. As the solution ferments, the microbes slowly excrete a sticky mat, forming a layer about 15mm thick. Lee carefully removes the layer, washes it in cold water, and spreads it on a flat wooden surface or smooth wooden mold to dry. Once all the water has evaporated, she peels the "textile," a stretchy, leather-like material, from the surface and cuts and sews it by hand. In an effort to avoid damaging the material with chemicals in dyes, Lee often colors it with fruit and vegetable stains. "Blueberry skins and beetroot work best," she says.

In the past seven years, Lee had made around 10 garments, many which have been on display at places like London's Science Museum. Though she has yet to gain the widespread acceptance of the fashion community -- "Fashion designers are fine about it as a material until you show how it's made and then they think it's somehow gruesome," she says -- Lee has become an eager recruit to the scientific community.

eco friendly textile Early on in the inception of BioCouture, Lee partnered with David Hepworth, a materials scientist she met in the museum, and they began to informally explore the idea by growing bacterial cellulose in his garage and her bathroom. Today, to improve upon that process, Lee collaborates with researchers at Imperial College London.



Cellulose naturally absorbs water, which doesn't make it an ideal material to sport on a rainy day. "The [cellulose] clothing takes up huge amounts of water and swells, making wearing it a bit unpleasant," says Alexander Bismarck, an Imperial College materials scientist. Rather than chemically altering the cellulose after it has been made, a tedious and not particularly eco-friendly process, Bismarck and Lee, along with Paul Freemont, head of molecular biosciences at Imperial College, are trying to modify the bacteria or growth medium directly to make the cellulose more hydrophobic. It hasn't been easy, says Bismarck: There's a fine line between clothes that turn to goo in the rain and clothes with no moisture absorption all. "Hopefully we will be able to produce a leather-like material from cellulose that has [appropriate] properties for the fashion world," says Bismarck. "I believe, a couple of years down the line, there will be a market for it."

Though Lee's clothing is not ready for that market quite yet -- despite a deluge of requests, she does not currently sell her creations -- she says she wants to make an impression on the next generation of designers. "I hope that BioCouture serves to at least raise people's awareness to a different way of thinking -- that [the fashion industry] should look to science for the solutions to our problems," says Lee. "We have really only just begun to imagine what we might grow using this process!"

And Lee's changing her tune with regard to her previous distaste for science. "I went to art school to escape science, only to find that the most exciting creative thinking right now is emerging from science," she laughs.

Read more: Haute culture - The Scientist - Magazine of the Life Sciences http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/57604/#ixzz0vWqRrLAn