“REVOLUTION IN DRESS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2230, 25 January 1921, Page 4

“REVOLUTION IN DRESS.

Are we on the threshold of a_ sweeping revolution in the manufacture in dress materials ? The question is asked by a Paris correspondent in announcing a French invention —a machine for extracting fibres from the leaves of wild pineapple, the banana, white nettle, and numerous other growths in tropical countries, and using them .in place of hemp and flax, of which the production has diminished since the Avar. In these days of dear clothing, says the correspondent, the invention opens out the possibility of

a wave of cheapness by the introduction of garments woven with these fibres. 'We arc told that the inventor is a great traveller, and lived for a long time in Nicaragua and Brazil. He had watched the natives combing with elementary instruments fibrous plants, and lie set to work to construct a machine to do the business. It is a machine of copper rollers which crush the plants, of small hammers which beat them, and of combs, which do their work without breaking the fibres. A process of brushing removes "the last vegetable fragments from the. fibres, which are combed and bleached by washing. The machine is worked by a motor of two horsepower, and in the course of a. single day it can absorb from*3s to 40 tons of raw material. The best results are obtained from the wild pineapples, whose leaves produce long fibres. ,'which, after treatment, can be likened sometimes to cotton, sometimes to silk. ‘ As yet we do not hear of any garments having been made from these fibres, and, therefore there are no details as to prices. Certainly the cost will determine whether men will lie willing to wear pineapple suits,, whether women will try the experiment of wearing banana robes, or whether we shall be content to sleep between palm-leaf blankets.