Its popularity rating is booming. More and more brands have made it the star of their collections in recent seasons. Even the cotton specialist, Petit Bateau, has dedicated a line to it. It is also found in certain cosmetic products! It must be said that linen has many good points.
In Clean Fashion (ethical fashion), table linen or bed linen, linen is all the rage. Although it still only represents 2.4% of the world's production of natural fibres (75% for cotton), 80% of it is produced in Europe and France is the world's leading producer. Cock-a-doodle-doo!
This is why many brands that now favor Made in France are putting it back in the spotlight. And are working to reestablish a sector that is still too delocalized.
Flax, an ecological plant
Flax is a herbaceous plant with pretty blue flowers. Its natural fibers are found in its stem and not in its flowers. It is the oldest natural material in the world. At the time of the Pharaohs, bodies were embalmed in strips of flax. Today, it is mainly cultivated for its textile fibers and its oil seeds.
- Almost zero environmental impact
Flax cultivation requires little water and pesticides. The plant grows naturally thanks to the heat of the sun and rainwater, so it does not require any irrigation, unlike cotton . It is also a very resistant plant fiber that requires almost no fertilizer or even pesticides. In addition, flax is a carbon sink: each hectare of flax retains 3.7 tons of CO2 each year.
Flax production is also ecological. Each of the stages of processing (harvesting, retting, scutching, combing, spinning, weaving, manufacturing) is done mechanically and without chemical solvents. One hectare of flax produces on average 1,300 kilos of long scutched fibres, in which the straw and seed are separated. Finally, if the original fibre has not been mixed with synthetic fibres or chemically dyed, it is completely biodegradable.
- Zero waste
Another advantage is that all parts of the plant are used. Its stems become fibers with multiple uses. Its seeds are collected either to be sown again or to make omega 3-rich cooking oils or paints.
Linen, a textile with multiple qualities
– Linen is renowned for its incredible resistance (2 to 3 times greater than that of cotton).
Strong, light and flexible at the same time, linen fiber has a very long lifespan. Although it appears rigid at first glance, it softens over time with use and washing. Linen owes this property to the pectins – from the sugar family – that make up the walls of its fibers. They help structure and hold the fibers together. This is also what makes it hydrophilic, i.e. very absorbent: linen can retain 20% of its weight in moisture.
This particularity explains its thermoregulatory, hypoallergenic and antibacterial properties. As a result, linen clothing is particularly pleasant to wear in hot weather. Lightweight, it keeps the body at an ideal temperature while having a super absorption power. It is also a very good insulator, thanks to its hollow fiber which retains both heat and freshness.
- And its many outlets
Flax has multiple uses. Its fine fibers are used for clothing, household linen and upholstery fabric, with an image of high-end nobility. Thicker flax fibers are used as insulating material, to absorb vibrations or are introduced into composite materials to strengthen them. Flax is also used in the automotive sector (components and insulation), hi-tech (headphones, chains) and sports (skis, bicycles, tennis rackets, surfboards, etc.). Flax is also used in the manufacture of banknotes or cigarette paper.
France, the world's leading producer and exporter of flax
- A predominantly European production
Flax grows exclusively in temperate and humid climates. And in fact, 85% of the scutched flax produced worldwide comes from a coastal strip extending from Caen to Amsterdam, following the coastlines of Belgium, the Netherlands and France. In France, the world's leading producer with 140,000 hectares of cultivation, flax is grown in Seine-Maritime, in the Nord, Pas de Calais, Somme, Oise, Eure and Calvados. France is renowned for its high-quality flax with fine and strong fibres. The European flax industry today consists of 10,000 companies spread across 14 countries.
- Exported production
The problem: 95% of French production is exported, mainly to China or India, to be processed there. Which obviously increases the carbon footprint of this very ecological material. On the other side of the world, workers in Chinese and Indian factories spin, weave and make clothes that are then resold in France, Italy or Belgium, but also in Japan, which is fond of this fiber, and even today in China. France therefore buys clothes made with the linen that it sold a few months earlier.
In addition, some manufacturers use chemicals during the linen processing phases (dyeing, chemical treatment, etc.) that alter the ecological character and quality of the natural linen fiber. Clothes crease, deteriorate more quickly and are less durable. Certainly, some labels, such as “Master of linen”, guarantee 100% European linen, from the field to the thread to the fabric.
Spinning mills for 100% French linen
This aberration has alerted certain brands that are fans of Made In France.
A collective called Linpossible was thus created, led by the committed brands Splice and 1083 , followed by Le Slip Français , the LCBIO association (Lin et Chanvre Bio), the Alsatian textile company Velcorex , the Romans-sur-Isère company Tissage de France, the specialist cooperative Terre de Lin and one of the last European linen spinners, Safilin .
The collective has been working for years to have spinning mills reopen in France, the last missing link in a supply chain for linen clothing made 100% in France. Indeed, Safilin, the last national spinning mill, had to close its Hauts-de-France site in 2005 to install its machines in Poland. Safilin will therefore reopen a spinning mill in 2022 with 14 spinning frames, including twelve dedicated to “wet” production (used mainly for textile manufacturing) and two “dry” spinning mills (thicker yarn, particularly intended for decoration, but also for thick pieces), to generate 350 tons of yarn per year.
Other projects have also emerged. In 2021, the Alsatian company Velcorex set up a dry spinning site to produce linen denim in particular. And Natup, which already owns a flax combing plant (42 employees), is due to set up a spinning mill with a production capacity of 250 tonnes of flax yarn per year with 25 employees in early 2022 in Saint-Martin-du-Tilleul (Normandy). However, this will come at a cost: the Linpossible collective estimates that the price of a kilo of flax spun in France will be around double that of flax spun abroad.
Linen, an ecological material and French pride, is now exported all over the world, but through spinning mills that are at best European, often Chinese. This increases its ecological footprint and sometimes deteriorates its quality. Fortunately, the challenge of recreating a 100% French sector seems to have been met, but to produce more luxurious and therefore more expensive linen.
