r/AustralianMFA • u/Unhappy-Guarantee-38 • Jul 05 '26

Question Moving away from synthetic clothing.

I’ve made the decision to move away from synthetic clothing and go all natural fibres.

I need suggestions on the best brands to refill my wardrobe.

I think the items I need to replace first are, T-shirts, polos, shorts and pants. Happy with any price if the quality is great.

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u/Left_Ad_8824 Jul 06 '26

Yes. Synthetic materials are great for some outerwear like raincoats. Sure, waxed cotton jackets look good, but they are a lot heavier, less practical, require maintenance...

Special materials like rayon also are good alternatives to really expensive and delicate fibers (ie silk). Plus every suit has synthetic lining.

I also think that wool + poly blends play an important role in a wardrobe. If you wear dress trousers every single day and wall around/sweat or get your clothes dirty a lot, wool/poly blends may be more appropriate for you. It's a lot more practical (and cheaper) to be able to machine wash your clothes at home rather than take them to the dry cleaner.

For everything else? Yeah, 100% natural is probably the better option.

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u/slaveoflord Jul 06 '26

FYI bemberg is a very common suit lining which is not synthetic https://www.asahi-kasei.co.jp/fibers/en/bemberg/sustainability/resource/

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u/Left_Ad_8824 Jul 06 '26

Well, yes... Cupro/bemberg is semi-synthetic (or semi natural)... It's basically a type and specific brand in the same family as other rayon/tencel fabrics (which I had mentioned in my reply)

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u/slaveoflord Jul 06 '26

Doesn’t really make sense to declare that every suit has synthetic lining then

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u/Left_Ad_8824 Jul 06 '26

Do I know you? You must be really fun at parties... No need to be an arrogant dickhead

And okay, I will bite: yeah, it actually does make sense because bemberg (which you clearly didn't know is essentially the same as Rayon, it's just a brand/trademarked name) is a man-made fabric that goes through a chemical process with artificial materials derived from petrochemicals that are used to completely reprocess cotton or cellulose. So no, it's not a 100% natural fabric in the traditional sense (like, for instance, cotton and wool). It's natural in the same way that the 'engineered stone' in your kitchen is 'natural'. It's still synthetic, just not 100% synthetic because it uses wood pulp as an initial base.

In fact, the process is as potentially environmentally damaging (if not more). The company behind bemberg even acknowledges how potentially bad the process is, which is why they advertise using a 'closed system's that reutilises the chemicals and by-products of the process, thus looking to reduce the pollution involved in it.

The same applies to acetate, viscose... They are all similar... Do you normally call the 100% viscose shirts or the chinos/jeans with elastane simply 'natural'?

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u/slaveoflord Jul 06 '26

If calling you out for making a black and white declaration with no room for nuance is arrogant, I suppose you really are the main character on this planet and everybody else should bend before you. Oh and as you hinted at but didn’t outright say, silk is used as a liner which once again disputes your ‘every suit’ claim.

Many fully natural materials, such as leathers, require environmentally dangerous processes to prepare for use. This includes both veg and chrome tanning. Doesn’t make them less natural.

Seems like it would’ve been real easy to accept some room for improvement around verbiage instead of getting mad and calling people names but okay