Nylon: A Revolution in Textiles

Since 1931, when Carothers first reported on his polyester fibers at an American Chemical Society meeting, newspapers had been reporting rumors that DuPont had developed a new fiber as good as or better than silk. By early 1938 the press was producing a steady stream of articles that suggested that stockings made from the mystery fiber would outlast silk and never run. If DuPont executives had begun to grow nervous about unrealistic expectations, they grew truly alarmed in September 1938 when the Washington News ran a story based on the newly released patent (U.S. 2,130,948). The article claimed that nylon could be prepared from cadaverine, a substance formed during putrefaction in dead bodies. When combined with reports of Carothers’s suicide earlier that year, coverage of nylon took on an oddly morbid tone. Perhaps to counteract these rumors, for many years thereafter DuPont’s publicity department stressed that nylon was derived solely from coal, air, and water.

DuPont regained control of nylon’s publicity on 27 October 1938, when it officially introduced the stockings to a crowd of 4,000 enthusiastic middle-class women at the future site of the New York World’s Fair. But while the excitement was building, the stockings themselves would not become commercially available for another 18 months. At that point the only women who could experience the stockings firsthand either worked for DuPont or were married to DuPont scientists in the nylon division. A limited supply of the first pairs went on sale in Wilmington, Delaware, in October 1939, but the stockings did not reach the national market until 15 May 1940. Offered at $1.15 a pair, they were sold out at most locations by noon. In 1940 DuPont produced 2.6 million pounds of nylon, making a total sales figure of $9 million; the following year the company sold $25 million worth of nylon yarn. Within two years of nylon’s introduction DuPont had captured an astonishing 30% of the full-fashioned hosiery market.

The liberal access to nylon hosiery that American women enjoyed proved short-lived. In November 1941 DuPont shifted its nylon manufacture from consumer to military production as a replacement for Japanese silk: in 1940, 90% of DuPont’s nylon had gone into stockings, but by 1942 virtually all nylon went into parachutes and tire cords. Nylon would eventually be used in glider tow ropes, aircraft fuel tanks, flak jackets, shoelaces, mosquito netting, and hammocks. In light of tremendous consumer demand, nylon inevitably found its way onto the black market; one entrepreneur made $100,000 off of stockings produced from a diverted nylon shipment.

DuPont jumped back into consumer nylon production almost as soon as the war ended, with the first pairs of stockings returning to stores in September 1945. Everywhere the stockings appeared, newspapers reported on “nylon riots” in which hundreds, sometimes thousands, of women lined up to compete for a limited supply of hosiery. Perhaps the most extreme instance occurred in Pittsburgh in June 1946, when 40,000 people lined up for over a mile to compete for 13,000 pairs of nylon stockings. Labovsky recalled that demand remained so high throughout the 1940s that DuPont required all its customers, no matter how large or reputable the account, to pay in advance: “The demand was so great. We had to make sure customers who wanted nylon had the money to pay for it . . . Even Burlington Mills would send a check for $100,000 to fill an order . . . Everybody wanted nylon.” Partly in order to meet demand and partly to avoid an antitrust suit, DuPont finally licensed nylon to outside producers in 1951.

Always in Fashion

Nylon stockings represented only the beginning of what would soon become a fashion revolution. Cheap and colorful, synthetic fibers offered the promise of an easy-care, wash-and-wear, disposable future. By the 1950s nylon and other synthetic fibers could be found in underwear, socks, petticoats, fake fur coats, mock-wool sweater sets, and even men’s drip-dry suits. Women’s fashion was especially transformed by synthetic fabrics, as new Lycra girdles—more comfortable and lightweight than traditional rubber models—cinched women’s bodies into dramatic hourglass figures that could then be surrounded with yards and yards of billowing synthetic material.

Because the variety of synthetic fibers was basically limited to viscose (rayon), acetates, polyesters, and polyamides, manufacturers realized early on that the key to their success lay in branding their specific products as unique. Generic DuPont nylon was soon joined in the marketplace by Bri-Nylon, Dacron (polyester), Terylene (polyester), Crimplene (polyester), Orlon (acrylic), Acrilan (acrylic), Tricel (acetate), and seemingly dozens more. Each of the chemical companies making these products then launched extensive advertising campaigns aimed at winning consumers’ loyalty to a branded fabric rather than to the specific fashions of a given season.

DuPont developed a particularly sophisticated approach to marketing its synthetic fibers. From the earliest days of its rayon production DuPont realized that if it was to capture the textile market it needed to capture the hearts of Parisian couturiers. The company’s Fabric Development Department, established in 1926, worked with designers to produce sample fabrics for textile mills and clothing manufacturers. By the mid-1950s the group was producing well over 1,000 fabric samples each year. DuPont salesmen then attempted to sway fashion designers by providing them with generous samples and free publicity. Their first dramatic success occurred at the 1955 Paris fashion shows, in which at least 14 synthetics featuring DuPont fibers appeared in gowns from Coco Chanel, Jean Patou, and Christian Dior. To heighten the glamour DuPont recruited fashion photographer Horst P. Horst to document designers’ works and then circulated the photographs in press releases across the country. Besides couture by Chanel, Dior, and Patou, Horst’s photos featured gowns by Madame Grès, Maggie Rouff, Lavin-Castillo, Nina Ricci, Emanuel Ungaro, Philippe Venet, Pierre Cardin, and the New York Couture Group, all in DuPont fabrics. A decade later, vanguard 1960s designers Pierre Cardin and André Courrèges embraced the futuristic feel of synthetics as the right look for Space Age living.

By the late 1960s synthetics had moved firmly off the runways and into the mass markets—and therein lay their downfall. Victims of overexposure, nylon and polyester seemed suddenly out of date, and their shiny luster started to look tacky. In the wake of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) and a growing environmental movement, consumers were turning to natural fibers, particularly cotton and wool. In 1965 synthetic fibers made up 63% of the world’s production of textiles; by the early 1970s that number had dropped to 45%. Although synthetic fibers regained some of their popularity in the 1990s as technical innovations improved their feel and performance, never again would synthetic fibers dominate the market as they did in the 1950s and 1960s.

Yet nylon is here to stay. We may not be wearing it as much, but in one form or another nylon surrounds us in our homes, offices, leisure activities, and transportation. The polymer revolution ushered in by nylon’s discovery has left us with a world of plastics that would be unrecognizable to our grandparents’ generation. Today manufacturers worldwide produce around 8 million pounds of nylon, accounting for about 12% of all synthetic fibers. Nylon may no longer be DuPont’s most profitable product, but it remains one of its most important inventions.

For Further Reading

Handley, Susannah. Nylon: The Story of a Fashion Revolution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.

Hermes, Matthew E. Enough for One Lifetime: Wallace Carothers, Inventor of Nylon. New York: American Chemical Society and the Chemical Heritage Foundation, 1996.

Hounshell, David A.; John Kenly Smith, Jr. Science and Corporate Strategy: DuPont R&D, 1902–1980. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Labovsky, Joseph. Oral history interview by John K. Smith, 24 July 1996. Chemical Heritage Foundation, Philadelphia. Limited access.

Meikle, Jeffrey L. American Plastic: A Cultural History. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1995.

Ndiaye, Pap. Nylon and Bombs: DuPont and the March of Modern America. Translated by Elborg Foster. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.