Reinventing Wool: How a Natural Fiber Survived the Synthetic Revolution

How chemistry, culture, and industry remade a natural fiber--and reshaped our closets.

Wool once shaped daily life in the United States. The ubiquitous textile clothed soldiers and filled civilian wardrobes; sheep even grazed on the White House lawn. Today, however, wool apparel represents a sliver of the global textile market. In Reinventing Wool, Melissa M. Littlefield uncovers the surprising story behind this dramatic shift.

Rather than fading quietly as synthetics rose to prominence, wool became the focus of a sweeping mid-twentieth-century effort to "modernize" natural fibers through chemistry, industry, and politics. Littlefield reveals how, between the 1930s and 1960s, wool was recast as a material in need of technological rescue. Industrial chemists coated it with resins, laboratories experimented with moth-killing compounds, and federal agencies promoted new treatments that promised convenience to modern consumers. Detailing stories like Woolite's cold-water campaigns--complete with department-store sheep baths--the invention of washable wool, and the USDA's little-known DDT-based mothproofing agent EQ-53, Reinventing Wool traces how a once-revered fiber was repeatedly reengineered to fit the ideals and anxieties of an increasingly synthetic age.

Weaving together textile science, advertising archives, governmental reports, and her own experience as a fiber artist, Littlefield highlights the cultural forces that reshaped wool's reputation. She shows how mid-century interventions altered not only the fiber itself but also public understanding of what counts as "natural," "improved," or "modern." The consequences extend well into the present, influencing how we value materials, evaluate environmental claims, and imagine the future of textiles. Reinventing Wool offers a fresh perspective on the intertwined histories of chemistry, agriculture, fashion, and consumer culture.

Melissa M. Littlefield is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of several books, including Instrumental Intimacy: EEG Wearables and Neuroscientific Control. She is a fiber artist who hosts the knittingthestash podcast on Youtube.