What fabric do you look for in clothes and bedding? Man-made vs Natural? Educate me please!

[Zorion]

I have always looked for 100% cotton bedding, and have a tendency to run in horror from polyester. This often results in buying more expensive but fewer items. Fine.. Clothes, I like linen, silk, cotton, wools (esp merino and cashmere) and leather for bags and shoes, especially the lining.

BUT my DH is a scientist and is of the opinion that manmade fibres have come a long way and are just as good, if not better than, natural ones.

I have to admit that my fabric snobbery comes from my grandmother who makes all her own, and mine as a child, and my Mum's clothes and bedding, curtains etc, and maybe the fabrics of old weren't as good as they are now, and of course the high street does seem flooded with synthetics these days...

So, what fabrics do you favour? Can synthetics be OK? And what is viscose (googling is giving me very different results!)

For bedding, cotton.
For clothes, ideally cotton bit it's getting harder to find. Definately not polyester or acrylic. I find wool too warm. Viscose is ok. I like tencel/lyocel.
For sports clothes, man made. The dry fit fabrics are excellent.

Same as you, I think there are some high performance manmade materials used in functional clothing (sports etc), but natural fibres win in the style and class stakes.

Mostly natural fibres only.
I do like the Heat tech/Heatgen tops for winter from Uniqlo and M&S, and those are mostly made of synthetics.

A lot of synthetics still look cheap to me - makes me think of cheap acrylic knitwear...

I get polycotton for bedding usually. I'm not particularly bothered about what clothes are made of either.

I think that a bit of manmade fibre is no bad thing in a wool jumper. Eg a bit of nylon content usually means it is a bit stronger and more resistant to shrinking in the was I find. I find purely cotton jumpers for example go a bit limp and lifeless after a few washes.

For bedding I prefer cotton. For clothes I stick to cotton / linen / silk mixes. Viscose makes me smell just as bad as polyester, and I'm fed up of throwing away clothes I'm unable to wear more than a couple of hours at a time (obvs a sweaty betty)

DH wears polycotton mix shirts, never wears deodourant and never smells of BO, so I guess it depends on the person.

Natural fibres for me as they are breathable and I don't end up feeling like I am wrapped in plastic.

Bedding must be cotton or I sweat to the point I wake up feeling like Iv been in the shower. Not tried other natural materials so can't comment but would never ever use manmade materials.

For a while I thought I was being a bit ott about it but this year I stayed at a b&b this year, the bedding felt ok soft etc but woke up sopping wet with sweat checked it and it was was poly cotton blend so I stand by my ott standpoint now.

Clothes I'm not as bothered about but due to medical conditions I sweat more than "normal" so there lots of materials a couldn't wear anyway, wool, acrylic, too much polyester etc so I do tent to stick to cotton type materials bottom half is less rigid

I sweat a lot in bed too so it seems I'm doing the right thing wrt cotton nightwear and bedding.

I have seen lovely Christmas PJs but they are 100% viscose, and half of my googling tells me viscose comes from natural fabrics, and the other half screams to stay away! Which is right!?

I didn't realise that fibre content was even a 'thing' until I came on mumsnet.

I've since started trying to avoid man made fibres, where possible, but if someone asked me why, all I could say is that 'mumsnet told me to'.

I do still wear viscoise, which I think is semi synthetic - I think it's made from natural materials but is manufactured.

man made fibres can be engineered to do what you want them to do on the whole. So they can be made breatheable and therefore ideal for performance and outdoor wear. However, they have little moisture in them, so they will always feel staticky. So for sports and performance wear man made fibres are probably the best.

However, in terms of comfort and breatheability in every day clothing, natural fibres are best. They are softer, absorb perspiration, and more comfortable to wear because of this. Those crap places that charge 300 quid for a polyester top or just trying to cut costs. That sort of polyester will never be engineered to perform well, it's a fashion item, so will be sweaty and electric.

In terms of bedding, 100% cotton all the way. Absorbent, soft and no pilling or bobbling. I don't even iron mine, the creases will fall out. Polyester/cotton fabric is shite for bedding, it's moly included to make it less expensive or easy care.

However, my biggest bugbear is viscose and modal. As this is masquerading as natural fibres. I often see it on websites as "pure modal" (yes M and S I'm looking at you).Or viscose is described as a "breatheable " fabric. Well it's made from wood pulp, and is full to the brim of chemicals, so IMO is both sweaty and cheap looking.

Does this help?