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Stir Up Some Nylon

As one of the first synthetic materials ever made, nylon changed fashion-and the world. Now you can make thread yourself by pulling it from a glass of chemicals

In 1938 the E.I. DuPont de Nemours Company, known at the time mainly as a maker of explosives, announced what was arguably the single most important invention in the history of legwear: nylon.

Nylon wasn´t discovered by accident or extracted from a natural source. It was one of the first materials engineered from scratch, based on an understanding of polymer chemistry and a desire to plug what was, apparently, a serious hole in the hosiery department.

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