the.com/fabric
a quiet machine of threads pretending it isn't engineering you wear
means A cloth made by weaving, knitting, or felting fibers together, or by extension the underlying structure that holds something together, as in 'the fabric of society.'
from From Latin 'fabrica,' a workshop or the craft practiced in it — the trade of a 'faber,' an artisan or smith. The word arrived in English through Old French 'fabrique,' first carrying the sense of a building or thing constructed, and only later narrowing to the woven stuff itself. So 'fabric' began as the whole idea of skilled making, and the cloth meaning is the part that stuck — fitting for something engineered to look like it just happened.
- oldest find
- woven flax dates back over 30,000 years
- denim origin
- named for Nimes, France: de Nimes
- spider silk
- stronger by weight than steel cable
- thread count lie
- high numbers often game the counting method
- space-grade
- Kevlar fabric stops bullets and spacecraft debris
cotton — fiber crop produced in india, china, usa generating ~25 million tons annually
silk — protein fiber from bombyx mori silkworms, sericulture centered in china and india
wool — protein fiber from sheep fleece, australia produces ~25% of world's wool
polyester — synthetic polymer fabric invented 1941, now dominant fiber at 52% global production