Toray launches eco textile with feel of traditional Japanese paper

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Feb 8, 2021

Toray Industries has unveiled a new polyester filament fabric called Camifu that it says “combines the softness, smoothness, and comfort of synthetic fibres with the natural feel and random unevenness of traditional Japanese paper”.

The new material is recommended for a variety of clothing uses, from casual medium-weight fabrics for men’s and women’s outerwear to cut-and-sewn apparel, “broadening the horizons of upmarket fashions in Japan and overseas markets”. It will be commercialised from the SS22 season.

The textiles giant said that unlike conventional fabrics, Camifu “can match the Japanese paper features that inspired it". That’s because it used Nanodesign, its conjugate spinning technology, to develop a flat C cross-sectional shape “that delivers a precise arrangement of three different polymers”.

It has “arranged polymers with different heat shrinkage properties in special shapes on the left and right of a flat cross section, with a soluble polymer in the fibre centre”. It heat-treated polymers on the left and right side of the fibre to bend along it. Coupled with a flat shape, this is claimed to create a “unique twist and stretch”. 

The company also said that “varying the arrangement and shape of the polymer with adjacent fibres generates different torsional structures for each yarn, resulting in a yarn bundle structure containing complex voids”. The end result “feels like hand-made Japanese paper” as well as being eco-friendly, as one of its polymers is recycled from film scraps.