In a new paper, Preeti Arya and Ajoy K. Sarkar, Textile Development and Marketing, look at a possible natural improvement to expand cotton’s uses, bringing it closer to a performance fabric. In “Cotton–Cork Blended Fabric: An Innovative and Sustainable Apparel Textile for the Fashion Industry,” published in April in the peer-reviewed journal Sustainability, the duo compared the material properties of a cotton fabric to a 10 percent-cork fabric, which is also a natural and sustainable material. The cotton-cork blend was found to be strong, pliable, easily dyed, and resistant to shrinkage, giving it, the authors conclude, “the potential to be a viable, sustainable apparel textile.”