Technical foul
Indignity Vol. 5, No. 190
ANDY ROONEY 2.0
Who Made Synthetics the Future of Clothing Again?
WE'RE IN AN age where bad things—things that seemed to have gone away, and deservedly so—keep coming back. George Santos, obviously, to say nothing of other once-disgraced public officials, but also and maybe not unrelatedly, clothing made of plastic.
For a long time, everybody knew the deal with synthetic-fiber clothing. It was cruddy and unpleasant and discredited, one more product of the same misbegotten 20th-century technologism that brought the world thorium toothpaste, leaded gasoline, DDT, and open-air nuclear testing. Wrapping the body in woven plastic made a person sweat and it made the fabric the person sweated into smell bad. Natural fibers felt better and smelled better, and eventually they reclaimed their proper place in people's normal wardrobes.
Synthetics, meanwhile, went off to do whatever things plastic was actually useful at doing, for people who didn't need clothes so much as they needed Tupperware for the body: keeping water off, or letting water flow through, or being impervious to scrapes. Camping stuff? I don't know; I wore jeans when I went camping and now I sleep in hotels, personally.
At some point, though, polyester fleece came creeping over the line between the things people wore alone out in the woods and the things people wear in the presence of other people. People decided it was cozy, which it is if you listen to your warmth receptors and ignore the murmuring horror from all the other kinds of nerves in the skin. Then exercise wear tightened up the performance of its elastic until workout clothes became flattering to the body instead of unflattering, at which point they began functioning as, and merging with, regular clothes.
And now, half a century past the prime of the leisure suit, J. Crew is offering pants in "seven-ounce performance-focused fabric with four-way stretch that will keep you cool, dry and comfortable": 51 percent elastomultiester, 41 percent cotton, 8 percent elastane. "Elastomultiester" is a stretchy word for "polyester." J. Crew is selling elasticized poly-cotton-blend slacks.
(Also: said slacks have a built-in "silicone shirt gripper.")
Performance! "Performance" is the excuse under which plastic has re-colonized everyday clothes. I'm looking at t-shirts and polo shirts, from companies that have sold me plenty of useful cotton clothing in the past, and now they claim to be selling me technology, by which they mean plastic. Uniqlo has an "AIRism Cotton Pique Polo Shirt," where the "AIRism" signifies that it is not, in fact, a cotton pique polo shirt, but a shirt made of material that the smaller print says "looks like a soft cotton pique fabric and feels silky and smooth"—57 percent cotton, 43 percent nylon in the body; 73 percent polyester, 27 percent rayon in the ribbing.
"Cool to the Touch function provides instantly cooling comfort," the copy says. A polo shirt does not need a cooling function; it needs to be made of cool, breathable cotton. Elsewhere, the company has a "high-performance T-shirt" with "'DRY-EX' technology" and "odor control and Cool Touch features." The reason the T-shirt needs an odor control feature is that it is made of 65 percent polyester and 35 percent nylon, and also that it is supposed to be washed in cold water on a gentle cycle. Leisure suits at least were indestructible!
Muji, for its part, has a "UV Protection T-Shirt," billed as "perfect for both casual wear and active pursuits." In addition to its UV-blocking power—solving the problem of how people were constantly getting sunburned through old-fashioned T-shirts—it boasts a "quick-dry feature." The feature, here, is that water cannot soak into the fibers of the shirt and stay there. That's because it is made of 100 percent polyester.
WEATHER REVIEWS
New York City, October 26, 2025
★★★★★ The rumples in the clouds became dimples in the clouds; the dimples in the clouds became spots of blue; the blue spots became blue rifts; the blue rifts joined together into a network of blue; the network of blue became the main part of the sky, with sun shining down. Leaves, still bright, blew here and there. The temperature was more congenial than the numbers on the weather app suggested. People looked comfortable in their chosen jackets or sweaters, and costumed children, toting their jack-o'-lantern-faced buckets, walked along with no need for mundane and obscuring outerwear. The light was only just trending toward the low, hammering bleakness of November, gold starting to head over to brass. At the Sheep Meadow, though, it cast a considered focus on every individual figure, and it neatly modeled the variety of the skyline off below the Park. Trees stood up in their distinct red, orange, or yellow on the crest of the hill overlooking the rollerskaters as they turned and twirled to "Lady Marmalade." Rowboats were out on the green water of the Lake. The benches on the shore were thickly occupied and the Bow Bridge was clogged with foot traffic. It was hard to believe sunset was only two hours away. Out on Central Park West, blinding light came off the windows of the Beresford, and further along the Beresford plunged the sidewalk into deep blue shadow. An isolated leaf of Virginia creeper showed scarlet against the tree trunk it had crept up. A dozen and more seagulls spun far above the mouth of the 86th Street Transverse on their black-tipped wings, pale gray and white plumage shimmering in the light, looping in place at various and shifting heights before easing off westward as one.
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.
HERE IS TODAY'S Indignity Morning Podcast!
Tom Scocca
Here is the Indignity Morning Podcast archive!
TOM SCOCCA
ADVICE DEP'T.
HEY! DO YOU like advice columns? They don't happen unless you send in some letters! Surely you have something you want to justify to yourself, or to the world at large. Now is the perfect time to share it with everyone else through The Sophist, the columnist who is not here to correct you, but to tell you why you're right. Direct your questions to The Sophist, at indignity@indignity.net, and get the answers you want.
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS in aid of the assembly of a sandwich selected from C.L.C. Tombola Cook Book, by the Ladies of Cornwall and Friends of the Cornwall Lacrosse Club, published in 1909 and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
OLIVE SANDWICHES.
Mash cream cheese very fine. Chop olives also very fine. Spread cheese on buttered bread and sprinkle chopped olives over it.
If you decide to prepare and attempt to enjoy a sandwich inspired by this offering, be sure to send a picture to indignity@indignity.net .
SELF-SERVING SELF-PROMOTION DEP'T.
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