The PULSE - Q+A with Deakin University
Our circular-conscious consumers told us the failures that frustrate them are related to material integrity. What’s happening in the fabric and construction when those things occur?
OCTober 01, 2026
The PULSE: Q&A with Deakin University
Alessandra Sutti
Director, Deakin Univeristy's Institute for Frontier Materials
Our circular-conscious consumers told us the failures that frustrate them are related to material integrity. What’s happening in the fabric and construction when those things occur?
Those are classic fabric failures – for circular and non-circular textiles. Common to all these defects are the fibres in the yarns becoming loose.
To make a yarn, we twist bundles of short fibres together. They stay in place because of friction. Incredible amounts of friction. If it weren’t for friction, our clothes would quite literally disappear as we walk. Not ideal.
Friction is our friend, and fibre length matters too. The longer the fibres, or the higher the friction between them, the longer they are likely to stay in place. But price pressures typically drive manufacturers towards shorter, lower-quality fibres, which can mean clothes ‘vanish’ day by day, pill or lose their shape.
Avoiding these failures starts with better materials and construction – designing garments for durability, not just for how they look when they are new.
Consumers are more conscious than ever about how they invest in clothing. How much of a garment’s quality and lifespan is determined at the point of material choice?
It starts with how strong and long a fibre is, how defect-free it is at the microscopic level, its chemistry and mechanical properties, how tightly those fibres are woven into a yarn and how the yarn is organised into a fabric, all affect how a garment will perform. Textiles are incredibly complex.
Manufacturers are constantly balancing competing demands – material availability and cost, ease of manufacture, production volumes and, of course, consumer fashion preferences. A tightly-woven canvas garment might be durable for gardening, for example, but it won’t necessarily have the softness consumers want in their everyday clothing.
And we still play a role in how long our clothes last. Washing and drying frequency, temperature, the detergents we use and the amount of agitation can all affect a textile’s lifespan. There’s a simple rule of thumb: the less, the better!
Your Institute works on redesigning materials for a circular economy. But designing something to survive years of wear and be recovered afterwards has often pulled in opposite directions. How can the industry do both well?
We often want the best of both worlds – something that lasts for years but breaks down quickly when the time is right.
We can already design clothes for programmable deconstruction. Seams, zips and stitching don’t need to be weak, they just need to be designed so they can be easily removed at the end of a garment’s life.
The chemistry is trickier. This is where materials engineering and biology become the superheroes. We need materials with their own chemical or biological ‘zips or scissors’ built into materials to trigger their breakdown. We can engineer these, but sometimes nature has already done the hard work.
At Deakin University, we’ve developed a suite of characterisation techniques to test materials. We bring soil and marine ecosystems into the lab to see how materials interact with different microorganisms and chemicals. These studies have allowed scientists to identify compounds and bacteria that breakdown synthetics. Who knows what we’ll find next?
What’s the oldest thing in your wardrobe that you still wear and why has it survived?
Aside from pyjamas, socks and T-shirts, there are quite a few oldies in my wardrobe. Plenty of jumpers and jackets with absolutely necessary elbow patches - I am an academic, after all!
I’d say the prize goes to a top and a jacket, clocking over 20 years of faithful service! They’ve survived through good care, and remarkably, still look much the same as they did when I bought them. My socks haven’t fared quite so well, though…
What’s the most spectacular way a piece of clothing has failed on you?
I do tend to wear my swimming suits a little bit too long – particularly when the shoulder straps are clearly beyond their best years. On one occasion, it wasn’t a shoulder strap that gave way. Luckily, there was no one else in the hotel pool at that time! A subsequent forensic examination determined the seams were all ‘cooked’. The costume came apart in my hands, leaving behind tiny bits of yarn. In hindsight it was entirely predictable with years of pool chemicals having taken their toll.