For two years this column has been examining how humans have utilised natural materials in everyday life, from primitive animal pelts to homespun linen and fine silks. For millennia, the only woven textiles known to man derived from animal and vegetable fibres – wool, linen, cotton and silk. Different grades suited all pockets and purposes, while mixed fabrics such as linsey-woolsey (linen and wool) and challis (silk and wool) extended their repertoire. Imagine, then, the appearance of totally new materials in the early 1900s: man-made/artificial textiles with strange, scientific names, developed in a laboratory.

Early man-made materials were pioneered in the 1800s, but the first synthetic (strictly, semi-synthetic) commercial viscose, rayon, was launched by silk textile manufacturer Samuel Courtauld & Company in 1905. This was created from raw materials including wood pulp, caustic soda, carbon disulphide and sulphuric acid – all fairly inexpensive and widely available. By the mid-1920s several other nations besides Britain were also significant producers of ‘rayon’ – the name adopted in 1924: France, Germany, Italy, Holland, Japan and the US. Rayon blended well with other fibres and could emulate fashionable lightweight fabrics at a fraction of the price, especially silk, hence it was called ‘artificial silk’ or ‘art. silk’. Early forms looked and felt inferior to real silk, but as costs fell, quality and appearance improved. New variants also emerged, such as crepe rayon and Celanese (acetate) rayon.

Affordable, easily laundered and ideal for a new generation of busy working women, (viscose) rayon garments were particularly well suited to the rising ready-to-wear clothing industry and contributed to the expansion of multiple fashion stores between the wars. From the mid-1920s, Marks & Spencer, already a household name, began to focus mainly on economical ready-made garments for working people and entered a period of rapid expansion. Embracing the latest technology and even setting up its own in-house textile laboratory, the company took full advantage of the new textiles.

Mass-produced clothes fashioned from cheap synthetic fabrics may not seem ideal to us today and were not for everyone a century ago. Increasingly bespoke garments tailored from quality wool, linen and silk fabrics set the financially comfortable apart from the working masses. However, the new fabrics were better for the environment, enabled ordinary people to follow fashion and improved life for millions as the interwar population soared. They would also prove invaluable when war broke out again in 1939. {