Review of anneke smelik’s materialist story “polyester: a cultural history”

Author: Michael Stanley-Jones, Sustainability and Capacity Building Advisor -CRF Italy

In a new paper, “Polyester: A Cultural History”, Anneke Smelik, Professor emerita of Visual Culture and Fashion Studies at Radboud University, Netherlands, traces a cultural history and critique of polyester from the perspective of the field known as the New Materialism (Smelik 2023, 2018).

Polyester, the most widely used man-made synthetic material is all-pervasive in today’s textiles and clothes, making up 54 per cent of all produced fibers.  Yet we know little about it.  In part this is because, according to Smelik, “fashion studies has devoted little attention to the physical substrate of garments” (Sykas, 2013). Smelik in her cultural history sets out to remedy this gap in our knowledge.

To understand her own way of going about this, it helps to know what New Materialism highlights for cultural history.  In a seminal 2018 essay, Smelik outlines what is at stake:

“The interdisciplinary field of new materialism highlights the role of non-human factors in the field of fashion, ranging from raw materials (cotton) to smart materials (solar cells) and from the textility of the garment to the tactility of the human body. New materialists work from a dynamic notion of life in which human bodies, fibres, fabrics, garments and technologies are inextricably entangled. The context of new materialism is posthumanism, which entails both a decentring of the human subject and an understanding of things and nature as having agency.”

It is not surprising that her research into the cultural history of polyester leans heavily into the role of technological change as a driver of the synthetic fibre’s story.  Few things decenter human agency as much as technology does.

Any history of polyester needs to explain how the synthetic fibre first boomed in the 1960s and early ’70s and then went bust at the end of the 1970s, before recovering in the ’80s and ’90s to become the dominant global fibre used in clothing today.  In 1960, 64 per cent of fibres in the USA was made of cotton and 29 per cent of synthetics. But a decade later the tables were reversed: 58 per cent of fibres were made of synthetics, versus 39 per cent cotton (St. Clair 2019).

Here Smelik takes two tracks, first highlighting the cultural value women (and some men) placed on polyester in the 1960s as a labour saving advance. Polyester brought the advent of permanent-press apparel with a distinctly modernist aesthetic: bright colors, permanent pleating, different shapes and smooth, simple, slender silhouettes (O’Connor 2011).

The collapse of demand in the late 1970s is principally tied to the counter-cultural backlash against this aesthetic.  Citing Schneider (1994), Smelik tells us that ”Hippies rebelled against bourgeois fashion, longing for a simpler, more natural and less “plastic” world.” John Travolta’s white suit in Saturday Night Fever (1977) also is said to have played a role in promoting this backlash.

A more materialistic cause also played a significant role:  global overproduction and the collapse of the North American and European textile sectors in the 1980s.

The revival of polyester Smelik ties to technological innovation, namely the invention of microfiber (shingosen) in Japan, along with solving of the perspiration problem through improved blended fabrics, and repurposing of polyester for ”active sportwear”, a rising market segment.  Think Jane Fonda circa 1982.

If shingosen helped the industry “to break out of the slump in polyester”, the sheer market forces of the phenomenon of fast fashion completed polyester’s rehabilitation and sealed its ascendency in today’s pret-a-porter fashion marketplace.  Polyester’s advantages over other fibers is economic: selling throwaway polyester clothing is the most profitable business model for the industry to pursue. And pursue it it did with a vengence from the 1990s up until today.

How consumers respond to technological change is part of culture.  Yet the history of polyester from a New Materialists vantage looks much like the old Materialists‘ point of view. Economics, with technology as its handmaiden, is the true driver of social trends.  Viewed through this lens, fast fashion is part of the democratization of fashion, in as much as cheap throwaway clothing has become accessible to all consumers.

In this account, cultural elements – the convenience sought by feminism, the so-called hippy backlash against plastic culture – should be questioned.

Other options lay open for escaping the drudgery of ironing natural fabrics. Today, hardly anyone irons cotton clothing anymore. Wrinkles have become acceptable.

The hippy backlash thesis is vulnerable to scrutiny of Smelik‘s suggested timeline. Hippy aesthetics peaked in the late ’60s; the collapse of the polyester market occurred a decade later. In between disco intervened.  How does John Travolta’s suit evoke a backlash which had set in 10 years earlier than Saturday Night Fever and was long in retreat by the mid-70s?

Something has gone wrong with this chronology.

Missing from Smelik’s account is evidence that marketing the new polyester designs played a major role in reintroducing synthetics to consumers.  She rightly points out that in the 1950s French couturiers used synthetic fibers for their collections, including synthetic gowns made by Chanel, Dior, Balmain, and Givenchy (Brunnschweiler and Hearle 1993).  Much less is heard about the role of later designers, e.g. Oscar de la Renta, twice president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (1973–76, and 1986–88), in incorporating polyester in their ready-to-wear lines.[i]

Pride and greed, all-to-human aspects of our agency, are also components of fashion’s cultural history.  A Materialist account of polyester’s history needs to be supplemented with such humanist material.

References

• Brunnschweiler, David, and John Hearle, eds. 1993. Polyester: 50 Years of Achievement. Tomorrow’s Ideas & Profits. Manchester: The Textile Institute.
• O’Connor, Kaori. 2011. Lycra: How a Fiber Shaped America. London and New York: Routledge.
• Schneider, Jane. 1994. “In and Out of Polyester: Desire, Disdain and Global Fibre Competitions.” Anthropology Today 10 (4): 2–10. doi:10.2307/2783434
• Smelik, Anneke (2023): Polyester: A Cultural History, Fashion Practice, DOI: 10.1080/17569370.2023.2196158
• Smelik, Anneke (2018). New materialism: A theoretical framework for fashion in the age of technological innovation. International Journal of Fashion Studies Volume 5 Number 1. doi: 10.1386/infs.5.1.33_1
• Clair, Kassia. (2018) 2019. The Golden Thread. How Fabric Changed History. Reprint. New York: Liveright Publishing
• Sykas, Philip A. 2013. “Investigative Methodologies: Understanding the Fabric of Fashion.” In The Handbook of Fashion Studies, edited by S. Black et al., 235–267 London: Bloomsbury.

[i] 100 per cent polyester floral-lace detail blouse for US$4,379. FARFETCH ID: 19029689; Brand style ID: 23RN734GFEBLK, https://www.farfetch.com/ge/shopping/women/oscar-de-la-renta-floral-lace-detail-blouse-item-19029689.aspx?v=f9b4157f-1656-4ba7-8b8d-3ac4237cd845. Accessed on 14 July 2023.