Why Some New Materials Succeed and Others Don’t

Hardly a year goes by without a new material appearing on the market that promises to be better and more sustainable than plain old cotton, or leather, or certainly polyester.

There was synthetic spider silk, various leather alternatives brewed in a lab or derived from mushrooms or pineapples and different materials made from waste, like cellulosic fibres created from discarded cotton or

. There’s been a surge in polyester…