Linen is very strong and absorbent and dries faster than cotton. Because of these properties, linen is comfortable to wear in any weather and is valued for use in garments. It is a textile made from the fibres of the flax plant. Linen is laborious to manufacture, but the fibre is very absorbent and garments made of linen are valued for their exceptional coolness and freshness in hot weather.
The collective term “linens” is still often used generically to describe a class of woven. In the past, “linens” also referred to lightweight garments such as shirts, trousers, blazers all of which were historically made almost exclusively out of linen. The inner layer of fine composite cloth garments (as for example jackets) was traditionally made of linen, hence the word lining.
Linen textiles appear to be some of the oldest in the world: their history goes back many thousands of years. Fragments of straw, seeds, fibres, yarns, and various types of fabrics dating to about 8000 BC have been found in Swiss lake dwellings.
Flax is either hand-harvested by pulling up the entire plant or stalks are cut very close to the root. The plants are dried, and the seeds are removed. The stalks are then ‘retted’, a process which uses bacteria to decompose the pectin that binds the fibres together. The stalks are then ‘scutched’, a process of removing the woody portion of the stalks by crushing them between two metal rollers. The fibres are removed and combed to remove the short fibres. The remaining long, soft flax fibres are then spun into yarns and woven or knit into linen textiles.
Flax is grown in many parts of the world, but top quality flax is primarily grown in Western European countries and Ukraine. In recent years bulk linen production has moved to Eastern Europe and China, but high quality fabrics are still confined to niche producers in Ireland, Italy and Belgium, and also in countries including Poland, Austria, France, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, Britain and Kochi in India. High quality linen fabrics are now produced in the United States for the upholstery market and in Belgium. Russia is currently the major flax cultivating nation.