Nano-Tex, a leading company in the field, has developed processes that make traditional cotton and silk fabrics resistant to spills that would normally ruin clothing.

NPR: Nanotech in Fashion: The Trend in New Fabrics

The techniques, symbolism and culture surrounding hand-dyed cotton and silk garments known as Indonesian Batik permeate the lives of Indonesians from beginning to end: infants are carried in batik slings decorated with symbols designed to bring the child luck, and the dead are shrouded in funerary batik.

UNESCO: Culture

Like artists of another era, he spends months on grand tours looking for unusual African cotton and Persian silk.

WSJ: Changing of the Guard

In addition to natural fibers like cotton, silk and wool, there are now a wide variety of synthetics on the shelves.

NPR: Nanotech in Fashion: The Trend in New Fabrics

There, among the giant irokos, the sapeles and the silk-cotton trees of the forest, she tended the guavas, pawpaws and roseapples she had planted there.

NPR: 'Ancestor Stones:' Life and War in Sierra Leone

There, she scooped up swatches of cotton, linen, denim and imitation silk--the real stuff is unkind to silkworms--and took them to Italian shoemakers.

FORBES: Magazine Article

The Australian "15 Milmil 15" wool feels like silk, breathes like Egyptian cotton and wears like iron.

FORBES: Magazine Article

And as hair glides over silk (as opposed to creating friction with cotton), it is also less prone to forming knots and tangles.

WSJ: Better Beauty Sleep

Produced in cotton, rayon and parachute nylon, as well as silk, the scarves were intended to brighten up post-war wardrobes with bold colours and patterns.

ECONOMIST: Henry Moore's fabrics

Before the dance, when I was all dolled up in my silk skirt, and I pushed my hands along them and put my cheek against the dark cotton, just for a second.

NEWYORKER: Natalie