How do you pick one out of 30?
Take a rayon fabric that we're looking at for our Ryan collection. The first thing you generally look at is shrinkage, so what is the length and width shrinkage you see. Cotton fabrics are normally much more stable than a cellulose fabric like rayon or viscose. Rayon and Viscose are made out of wood pulp, generally, and those have higher shrinkage than cotton, but they also have this silkier, drapier feel that women love. For us it's about, then, finding a rayon that doesn't shrink as much. There are ways you can go about fixing that. One is in the finishing process and how tightly knit the fabric is. They're all knit on circular machines and if you knit it on a larger circular machine you can get a tighter fabric weave at the end of the day.

Emma Barker