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Brands from Gap to Reformation to Mango are using linen for just about every style imaginable this summer: trousers, suits, dresses and even shoes. It may offer a rare example of a fashion trend that aligns with the industry’s promises for sustainability.
Linen is considered among the lowest-impact fibres used in fashion, mainly because of its roots in flax, which requires less water than other fibre crops and can be grown via methods that promote healthy soil. Linen is also durable, and in its purest form can be biodegradable, unlike its synthetic counterparts. But it’s been overlooked and underappreciated, according to proponents who hope this will change beyond the summer trend cycle.
“When you think about preferred materials in the sustainability space, no matter who you’re asking or what you want to weigh more than other factors, linen comes out on top,” says Kathleen Talbot, chief sustainability officer at Reformation. “It has a lower carbon intensity than most materials, a lower water footprint and is less problematic when you think about labour and due diligence.”
For brands that source linen from organic farmers and use third-party certifications to ensure fair labour practices, increased use of the fabric — especially when replacing synthetics or conventional cotton — is positive for both the environment and working farmers. While mass-market brands that procure non-organic linen compromise some of those benefits due to the use of chemicals in the retting and dyeing process, Inka Apter, director of material sustainability and integrity at Eileen Fisher, says the final product is still far less resource intensive than textiles like cotton or polyester.
In cases where brands are using linen as an alternative to cotton or synthetic fabrics, they are lowering their water and chemical footprints. The primary limitation is scale: flax made up less than 1 per cent of total fibre production in 2022, meaning linen is more expensive and harder to find than other textile inputs.
In addition to normally being grown with very little irrigation, flax requires lesser amounts of pesticides and fertilisers than other textiles, which have greenhouse gases associated with their production and usage, especially when used excessively. That results in lower water pollution risks as well as fewer health risks for the growers themselves, according to Debra Guo, cotton and crops lead at Textile Exchange.
Flax naturally lends itself to eco-friendly agriculture, experts say, because the crop is pulled directly from the ground rather than cut, meaning there’s no need for tilling (the process of digging up crop roots that have caused significant soil erosion). The growing season is typically 100 days, which is shorter than many alternatives and means that flax farmers can rotate the crop with others like beans or potatoes to keep the soil rich, says Angela Wartes-Kahl, co-founder and COO of Fibrevolution, an organisation working to bring flax production back to Oregon and the Pacific Northwest.
At the same time that lifecycle analyses — which study the environmental impact of textiles — are proving linen’s smaller footprint, consumers have warmed to its look and feel. At Reformation, linen represented 11 per cent of the brand’s fibre sourcing in 2023, up from 8 per cent in 2022.
“Linen is growing a healthy amount over the last few years,” Talbot says. “It used to be a very narrow season, but it’s more popular throughout the spring and summer months and going into more categories.”
As part of its better materials strategy, Reformation began offering popular styles formerly made from higher impact materials such as viscose or silk in linen versions, Talbot says.
Potential downsides
But like any fibre that’s part of the global supply chain, linen production still carries environmental and human rights risks. While the cultivation of flax is relatively low impact, the process of turning it into a fabric for fashion — fibre extraction, material processing and consumer use — is not. That’s particularly true when producers optimise for cheaper production at a larger scale, as many suppliers and brands have previously done.
Flax is prepped for processing through a method called retting, which is how the fibre used to make linen is separated from its plant stem. On organic farms, this is usually achieved by letting the flax lay in the sun on the field where it is grown, but other producers use chemicals or water for this process, which results in wastewater pollution. It should also be noted that dyeing linen comes with the same chemical contamination risks and energy use as dyeing any other fabric.
While the majority of flax for fibre is produced in France, Belgium and the Netherlands, most of it travels to China for textile processing. Linen has historically been grown and processed in regions of China that have a history of human rights abuses, says Eileen Fisher’s Apter, where 20 per cent of styles are made with linen. The company has, in some cases, had to rebuild supply chains to be sure it was avoiding those regions, she says.
“A lot of linen is grown and processed in Egypt, China and Lithuania where there is minimal traceability, subjecting it to the same issues as any other natural fibre when it comes to labour and chemicals issues,” Wartes-Kahl of Fibrevolution says.
One way brands can gain better visibility into their linen supply chain is through the Masters of Linen certification scheme, a traceability programme run by the Alliance for European Flax-Linen and Hemp, which guarantees that the flax is grown and processed into linen within Europe. Other companies, like Reformation, rely on the Global Organic Textile Standard to ensure their linen is coming from organic sources and that employers meet minimum social responsibility standards.
If brands want to have the largest positive environmental impact, it’s important to source organic linen, Apter says. About 99 per cent of linen used by Eileen Fisher is organic to ensure that farmers are eliminating synthetic inputs and promoting soil health.
What should it cost?
Despite its wide-ranging environmental benefits, linen has a long way to go before it becomes as prominent as cotton and synthetics. Flax holds just 0.3 per cent of the overall textile market share, while cotton has 22 per cent and synthetics like polyester have 65 per cent, according to a 2023 Textile Exchange report.
The primary reason being that linen is much more expensive than its alternatives. As of March, the average price of European flax fibre was up 55 per cent on the year prior, according to a study by the Alliance for European Flax-Linen and Hemp.
There are fewer flax growers globally than there are producers of cotton and synthetics, and hot temperatures have limited the flax supply in Europe in recent years, Wartes-Kahl says. Fibrevolution is working to bring more flax production to North America, but demand continues to outpace supply, keeping prices high. As a result, many mass-market brands blend linen with synthetics such as rayon, stripping away some of the environmental benefits.
At Eileen Fisher, however, linen’s long-term durability helps justify its use across seasons and styles. “With our take-back program, we get linen garments from 30 years ago that still look amazing,” Apter says.
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