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Researching textiles of the future

Anyone saying “textile” inevitably implies “clothing”. However, the textile industry today has very broadly outstripped this traditional approach. Following the example of global economy, the sector has to adapt and integrate new precepts:

• Giving meaning: the notion of ‘value-added’ is being increasingly promoted, all the more so in the so-called developed countries where technological innovation must make up for an uncompetitive cost of labour. The decline in the textile industry in France and in the Nord Pas-de-Calais region particularly illustrates the phenomenon.
• Meeting a specific need: Standardised production has ceased to be the norm. The end consumers and the different economic sectors demand products that are more and more personalised. We have reached an era of ultra segmentation of markets.
• Using renewable resources and protecting the environment: the principles of sustainable development have permeated the economy. The textile field is no exception to this. As a renewable raw material, ‘agro-resources’ stand out as being the only renewable raw materials enabling the manufacture and substitution of practically all oil-based products.

Faced with these challenges, new ways have to be thought up of creating materials that will provide the best possible balance between properties sought / cost and quantity of material and energy used, so that these new processes may be implemented and these new materials may be created that are either biodegradable or can be easily recycled. Textile technologies are particularly appropriate in this new economic environment because of their adaptability and diversity across the three levels of innovation:

• Raw materials: in the form of fibre or filament, of synthetic (new polymers, green chemistry, etc.) or natural origin, multi-functional or holding specific properties, raw textile materials offer an impressive array of choice.
• Processes: braiding, spinning, non-woven, alignment, etc. There is a profusion of available techniques which can be inter-linked.
• Procedures: it is fairly easy to give the cloth new properties so as to further increase the functionality of the product.