Hemp-Style

In recent years, the world has been going through a new and exciting green revolution. In fact, thanks to the awareness of scholars and researchers on topics such as pollution, deforestation and the renewed interest of politicians in such topics, the desire to decrease our import is becoming more and more widespread.

Indeed, we can see an increasing growth of associations and initiatives around us, with the aim of promoting a greener and more ecological future. The initiatives have become more and more: from the search for more ecologically sustainable raw materials than plastic, to the creation of less invasive farming and breeding methods, to the redesigning of cities to reduce pollution.

Similarly, fashion has also kept up with the times, trying to renew its clothes and become more ecologically sustainable. This great process encompasses several steps: from discovering the harms of fast fashion to creating circular and sustainable fashion. One of the most fundamental steps in this process is the use of raw materials that can be more ecologically sustainable and of good quality. And it is in this small quest for a green future that textile hemp is making a comeback.

Woven hemp: the birth and history of green gold

Hemp fabric, as can be deduced from its name, is a completely natural fabric made from 100% fibres of the hemp plant. The plant is also known as industrial hemp and has a long history of use in textile production. Hemp fabric was once a very common type of fabric, but its popularity declined in the mid-20th century due to the advent of synthetic fibres and worldwide prohibition, which has only recently been eased.

In is produced, in particular, from the Cannabis Sativa plant, of the Cannabaceae family, a plant used for a wide variety of purposes, such as paper production. Hemp fabric is considered, together with linen and cotton, to be one of the three completely vegetable fabrics created by human beings. Hemp fabric has a much shorter lifespan than synthetic fibres, so it can be recycled more easily. Consequently, hemp fabric is becoming an increasingly popular choice for eco-conscious fashion brands.

It is considered an environmentally friendly textile fibre for all sorts of reasons. First of all, it is important to emphasise the simplicity and sustainability of hemp cultivation. Indeed, hemp is a type of plant that can be grown in any type of soil, as it adapts to any type of climate and soil conditions. It can also be cultivated following the dense cultivation method, where multiple layers of hemp plants can be grown, due to the creation of thinner stems.

Finally, it must be remembered that hemp does not require any kind of fertiliser or pesticide for growth, making it extremely eco-friendly, and can be exploited in almost all its parts for numerous purposes, thus reducing waste. In short, it is truly an exceptional discovery in the field of eco-friendly fashion. After being harvested, the hemp simply has to undergo processes to purify the plant of its most woody parts: maceration, graming and combing.

Hemp cultivation: the secrets of Made in Italy

Although few people know it, hemp fabric is one of the secret weapons of the Italian economy and represents a very important phase in the history of Italian fashion. In fact, the strong link between this fabric and Italy has very distant origins, taking us back to the early 1930s. Back then, Italy stood out across the globe as the world's second largest producer of Cannabis Sativa, or hemp, with more than 85 thousand hectares of cultivation, surpassed only by Russia.

Italian supremacy began to falter a few decades later, during the 1950s, due to the ever-increasing growth of synthetic textile fibres and worldwide prohibition of the entire hemp plant (we have discussed this in detail here). During prohibition, which lasted more than fifty years, Italy lost its world leadership, but remained faithful to traditional methods and tried to safeguard as much as possible the precious knowledge of weaving. Especially in recent years, there have been numerous attempts by Italy to return to its old primacy with the export and use of hemp.

One of the first to experiment with hemp in the late 1990s and early 2000s was one of the world's most famous fashion designers, Giorgio Armani. In fact, Canapaitalia, supported by Linificio and Canapificio Nazionale and the famous Giorgio Armani, decided to replant one of the varieties of hemp legally authorised by the state, namely Fibranova (more info here). The designer decided to promote the initiative by developing the first jeans made entirely of hemp. He also decided to promote hemp in haute couture, giving Maestro Claudio Abbado a hemp tailcoat. Despite their efforts, unfortunately, hemp did not achieve the desired success until today.

Why hemp fabrics represents the future of fashion

At last, the time seems ripe for the return of hemp to the fashion industry. Indeed, hemp fabric may be the right choice, both economically and ecologically, for the development of fashion in the coming years. In particular, with the growing need to take steps towards the development of more sustainable fashion, hemp represents the material that can give the fashion world a new chance and, at the same time, save our world from the climate crisis.

Hemp, in fact, is a plant that does not require any kind of fertiliser or pesticide for its growth. Consequently, its cultivation, even in larger quantities, will not require the use of chemicals and potentially toxic substances that can harm the environment. This plant also has a very interesting feature: it is an annual crop that absorbs almost four times the average amount of CO2 that is normally removed from the atmosphere by trees.

This means that hemp has less of an environmental impact on our planet than other more polluting plants, such as cotton. Furthermore, it can be grown in large quantities in an extremely small piece of land, due to the lightness of its stem, thus taking up as little fertile land as possible.