From Medical Devices to Master Yarns: An Engineer's Quiet Textile Evolution

Looking for any textile technicians, engineers and yarn scientists to nerd out with and challenge/test my assumptions. I’m a materials and biomedical engineer pivoting from 20 year career in med device innovation threading together a few passions, interests and professional skillset.

Goal started around 18 months ago to make technical socks that look good, have a few novel features to stand out in the market and are made in a way they could more readily be either recycled to spin out new socks or biodegradable…

potentially out of bio-based or corn-derived fibres. finding a factory and sourcing more niche technical fibres without my network was one challenge. While for example fibres that are more likely natural, biodegradeable corn derived, likely to perform poorly in a wet, sweaty environment like a hiking sock, and serve poorly for that purpose.

Turns out there was a lot to unpack from that, and while I aware there is much more nuance to sustainability. It feels at times a Sisyphean ambition, because of how complex and unsustainable the industry is… landed on use less and make what we use last longer, but it’s a tangle of competing needs and if you pull one thread, it’s a compromise somewhere else.