Natural Materials
At the origin of textiles

Man has been working with vegetable fibers (linen, hemp, jute, etc.) for millennia to manufacture products that have accompanied his evolution, such as ropes and sails for boats, clothing, sheets, canvases, etc. These fibers, for a time abandoned by the rise of synthetic fibres, are being reinvented and used in new applications (construction, composites, etc.), their very limited environmental impact both in terms of manufacturing and recycling/composting being a real asset. These fibers come from different parts of the plant according to the species: we speak of seed fiber for cotton, bast fiber (coming from the stem) for flax, hemp, bamboo, jute, foliar fiber (coming from the leaf) for sisal and fiber from the bark for coco.

There are 2 types of fibers of animal origin: sheep's wool, more broadly animal hair and natural silk. These fibers, and particularly in the case of wool, developed with the rise of animal domestication several millennia ago. These are made up of keratin (in the case of wool) or fibroin (in the case of silk). To remove these fibres, 3 methods are used:

• Shearing the animal in the case of wool from sheep and camelids (llama, alpaca, vicuna, etc.), for mohair (angora goat) and pashmina (from goat hair)
• Combing or hair removal: angora rabbit or camel
• Silk comes from secretions, it is produced from the cocoons of mulberry caterpillars. There are other more confidential fibers such as spider silk, extremely resistant, or byssus from filaments produced by certain molluscs.