For many reasons, people continue to consume fast fashion and circulate its latest products in different ways. But that does not contradict their growing resentment toward some of the symbols associated with it, especially once that resentment shifts from an environmentally and medically informed awareness supported by studies and research into a cultural narrative and a stereotype amplified across social media. In fashion, polyester has moved from being a fabric with synthetic fibers to becoming a word loaded with negative judgment, because it has come to symbolize three things people reject today, cheapness, environmental harm, and an artificial, plastic-like quality far removed from nature. At first glance, the polyester debate may seem like a personal matter tied to environmental awareness and human health. In reality, the subject is more complex. Understanding contemporary fashion also requires understanding this material, because its presence spans every kind of clothing, from luxury to fast fashion, and because it is the most widely used fiber in the world. Which brings us to an important question. Why polyester, and is it always bad?
Polyester was first developed as a spinnable fiber in 1941, then truly entered the clothing market after the Second World War, especially in the 1950s. It was marketed as a miracle, because in that moment it seemed like a near-magical solution to everyday clothing problems and to the effort required to care for garments. It was lightweight and durable, required almost no ironing, dried quickly, resisted wrinkles and stains, and could hold shape and pleats. It was also seen as a model of modernity, technology, and the future. At first, polyester was still relatively expensive, but prices dropped in the 1960s as production expanded dramatically and competition between companies intensified. The 1960s became the great boom period for the material, as it moved from being largely confined to men’s suits and practical clothing into ready-to-wear and blended fabrics. It even climbed to the heights of fashion and appeared in one of Cristóbal Balenciaga’s couture designs for Fall 1966. Polyester continued its quantitative expansion across the market into the 1970s, and factories and manufacturers did not stop producing more of it. But in the late 1970s, the tide quickly turned. Polyester began its slow cultural decline under the weight of fatigue with a material that felt repetitive and omnipresent, alongside the rise of hippie culture, which pushed public taste toward more natural options and rejected the dominance of plastic over human life. At that point, despite its continued presence in some high-end fashion, it was difficult to imagine polyester returning to European fashion as a convincing aesthetic symbol, because its reputation had already been damaged by overproduction.
Yet polyester possessed a design advantage that helped bring it back and gave it an edge over many traditional fabrics in certain structures and forms, which is its ability to take shape and hold the required structure. That quality comes from polyester being a thermoplastic material, meaning its fibers soften when heated and can then be fixed into a new form as they cool. This makes it possible to create pleats, curves, or precise structures that hold better than many natural fibers. That quality was particularly compelling to Japanese designers such as Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo, and Yohji Yamamoto, who were working with forms, volumes, and movement that felt unfamiliar within Western fashion. They were not bound by the same European anxiety around polyester. Instead, they read it as a material that could help build design, and they connected it to avant-garde thinking, geometry, and textile innovation.
Japanese avant-garde fashion established a strong presence in Paris in the 1980s, bringing with it a different understanding of the relationship between body and cloth. That perspective can be read through a Japanese concept such as ma (the interval, or meaningful negative space) which treats space as something with aesthetic function and significance. This way of thinking set them apart from the European design logic dominant in fashion at the time, which was rooted in drawing cloth tightly and precisely around the body with as little empty space as possible. It also pushed them toward experiments that altered the aesthetic concept of the body itself, while carrying an implicit critique of established fashion rules. In the 1980s, Japanese designers succeeded in changing polyester’s image on a critical and artistic level. The material acquired a different meaning, no longer tied to convenience or market value, but to an artistic vision and to its ability to produce geometric or avant-garde structures as a distinct aesthetic language. Then, in the late 1980s, the industry itself invested further in improving polyester, and polyester fabrics became better in terms of touch, breathability, and resistance to sweat and odor. It also became more suitable for sportswear and functional clothing. At that point, its return was no longer justified only on aesthetic grounds. It became useful to everyday life once again, while carrying artistic and commercial value at the same time.
The technical advances achieved by the polyester industry in the late 1980s paved the way for the material to play an even stronger role in the following decade. In the 1990s, polyester’s characteristics—its low price, rapid production, and ability to be produced repeatedly on a large scale—made it ideal for becoming the core material of fast fashion. In fact, fast fashion could not have developed on this scale without synthetic fibers, with polyester at the forefront. This type of fiber greatly supports fast fashion’s need for inexpensive materials, massive-volume production, and the idea that the consumer will replace a garment after only a few wears. In an important study tracing the cultural history of polyester, Anneke Smelik, emerita professor of visual culture and fashion studies at Radboud University, argues that the major expansion of polyester in the 1990s was not simply a phase of vulgar repetition. She shows that polyester quality also improved, and that some types became closer to silk in hand and drape. In other words, polyester became technically better, while at the same time becoming more deeply tied to the logic of accelerated consumption. From the 1990s until today, polyester has not retreated from its place in fashion, especially fast fashion. It continued to expand, even as it increasingly came under environmental criticism and research scrutiny.
In reality, polyester’s problem lies more in context and consequence than in the material itself. Environmentally, one of its biggest problems is that it belongs to the family of synthetic fibers tied to fossil fuels. Synthetic textiles, including polyester, also contribute to the release of microplastics into water. The issue is not only in production, but also after use: polyester does not disappear quickly, and blended fabrics make recycling much more complicated, meaning its impact remains embedded in the waste cycle for a long time. That is what makes it an environmental dilemma. On the level of human health, its problems appear more clearly for people with sensitive skin or eczema, because synthetic fabrics such as polyester can, in some cases, cause irritation or inflammation due to friction, heat, and sweat. In an article published by the American Academy of Dermatology, the Academy explains that fabrics themselves are rarely allergens, but that the chemicals and dyes used to treat them can cause allergic reactions. The most common dye allergen is a dye called disperse blue, which is used to color synthetic fabrics such as polyester and nylon. DermNet also notes that while the fabric itself can sometimes be part of the problem, the more common cause is irritation or allergy related to dyes and finishing treatments. Culturally, polyester is no longer viewed as an outstanding material for avant-garde design and functional clothing. Instead, it has become associated with mass production, represents the image of fast consumption, and reveals the commercial logic of the market. That has reinforced the assumption that fashion relies on polyester largely because of its low price. Although that is partly true, it also erases the fact that some designers use it for practical and design-based reasons. Many people also ignore blended fabrics and the proportion of polyester in them. A garment containing, for example, 20 percent polyester may still have a relatively low polyester content, and in that case polyester may function as a supportive element rather than merely a cost-cutting device.
Since no natural material can do everything polyester does, the use of this fiber can sometimes be justified from a design and functional perspective. The issue is more complex than a simple black-and-white judgment. To conclude that anyone using polyester is doing so only to reduce costs at the expense of the environment and human health is not a fair judgment. It reflects an oversimplified reading of how fashion actually works. We can reduce the negative impact, and also reduce the spread of misleading assumptions, when we stop circulating random criticism and shift the question from “Is this garment made of polyester?” to “Did polyester add something to this garment?” In the end, polyester does not require agricultural land, nor the toxic pesticides and fertilizers associated with conventional cotton, and its production can in some cases consume less water. But that does not erase its other problems, above all its ties to fossil fuels and microplastics.
