Game Changers: Nylon, the fiber that changed America

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NYLON:

Feb. 16, 1937.

HOW OLD ARE YOU NOW? 80.

Between 1.2 million B.C. — when our humanoid ancestors began losing their fur — and Feb. 16, 1937, clothes didn't change much. Fashion was pretty much at the mercy of animals and vegetables.

Bears gave us their skins. Worms spun threads for us. Sheep were shorn, and cotton was harvested, all so we could look good on a date.

Then, in February 1937 — 80 years ago this month — U.S. Patent No. 2071250 was issued to chemist Wallace H. Carothers (assignor to E.I. DuPont) for Linear Condensation Polymer.

"Nylon" became the name, only after 400 others had been rejected. Among them: "Klis" ("silk" spelled backwards), "Nuron" ("no run" spelled backwards), and "Duparooh" (an acronym for "DuPont Pulls A Rabbit Out Of a Hat"). In-house, the new material was known as "66" — a reference to the 6 carbon atoms each in the two chemical compounds that make up the fiber.

It was one of those "Frankenstein" moments — a cultural crossroads, when something hitherto the domain of God becomes possible in a laboratory. It was also one of the turning points in consumer history. There had been "artificial' fibers before: rayon, developed as early as 1855, was a synthetic creation made from wood pulp. But nylon was the world's first totally man-made fiber. And it was a sensation.

"It hit at the right time," says Debra Hughes, curator of collections and exhibits at the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware.  "Women wanted it."

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Today we take nylon for granted. Stockings, shirts, dresses, toothbrush bristles, fishing lines, guitar strings, parachutes, carpeting, automotive upholstery, and camping gear are made of it. Carry-on luggage only became possible thanks to lightweight nylon fabric. All the sexy, skin-tight fabrics that we like to wear — and watch other people wearing — have their origins in that breakthrough moment at DuPont in 1935 when Carothers and his many associates created a synthetic substance they called polyamide 6-6.

"The excitement was the newness of it, what it could to, how it looked, how easy it was to care for, how inexpensive," says Diane Maglio, who teaches a course in "Fashion Textiles for Apparel and Home" at Berkeley College (it has a campus in Woodland Park).

"It was fiber you could use for everything," Maglio says. "And such style! And modern! People were looking to the future. This was modernity at its best."

For women, it was also the answer to a prayer. Necessity, in this case, was definitely the mother of invention.

Hemlines, in the 1930s and 1940s, had been getting higher, exposing more leg. Silk stockings were expensive and not very durable. As women increasingly joined the workforce during the Depression and war years, their stockings ran — and they ran through stockings. "There was definitely a need for something stronger," says Hughes, whose recent exhibit "Fashion Meets Science: Introducing Nylon," paid tribute to the miracle fiber.

Rumors that DuPont had created a new, magical fabric were already buzzing when 3,000 clubwomen gathered at the future site of the New York World's Fair at Flushing Meadows, Queens, on Oct. 27, 1938.

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They were there to attend a seminar called "We Enter the World of Tomorrow," an annual forum on world problems. But Hitler, the Depression, and labor unrest all took a back seat when DuPont's Charles Stine used the occasion to make a dramatic announcement. "A brand new chemical textile fiber" was about to come on the market, he said, made entirely of ingredients found in the mineral kingdom — coal, water and air. "It can be fashioned into filaments as strong as steel, as fine as a spider's web," he told them. Women all over America knew what that meant. Stockings. "When he said that, all the women burst into applause," Hughes says.

The name "nylon"  — lower case  —  was never trademarked; DuPont wanted to stress that they had invented, not merely a new product, but a brand new substance, like iron or sulfur.

When the World's Fair opened in 1939, nylon stockings were one of the prize exhibits, along with television, "Futurama," and Elektro, the Mechanical Man. When nylon hose went on general sale on May 15, 1940  — priced $1.15 per pair — most locations had sold out by noon."They called it N day," Hughes says. "Everybody had to have a pair of them."

Four million pairs of nylon stockings were sold within two days of the product launch. In 1941, DuPont's nylon sales were up to $25 million.

But the tumult created by the introduction of nylon in 1940 was nothing compared to the withdrawal of nylon in 1941.

When America went to war on Dec. 7, 1941, DuPont re-geared its nylon production to the military. Parachutes could no longer be made of imported Japanese silk; nylon was the obvious substitute. Nylon was needed for shoelaces, hammocks, mosquito netting, flak jackets, tow ropes. As abruptly as they arrived, nylon stockings vanished from department stores. And American women experienced collective withdrawal.

Those that could got them from the black market — often paying up to $20 a pair. Those who couldn't took to drawing seam lines on their legs and calves. Houses were robbed for their nylons (18 pairs were swiped by desperadoes in Louisiana). A 1943 Fats Waller song, "When the Nylons Bloom Again" (reprised in the 1978 Broadway show "Ain't Misbehavin' ") captured America's collective sigh:

"I'll be happy when the nylons bloom again

Cotton is monotonous to men

Only way to keep affection fresh

Get some mesh for your flesh"

All of which paved the way for one of America's great episodes of civil insurrection.

"The Nylon Riots" which began in September of 1945 were sparked by DuPont's announcement in August — eight days after V.J. Day — that it would be returning to civilian production of nylon. The excitement this generated — and the frustration when shortages occurred — boiled over into mob unrest not seen in department stores until the Black Friday era, 60 years later. In Pittsburgh, 40,000 customers fought over 13,000 pairs. In Augusta, Ga., women knocked down shelves and displays as they pushed their way into the store. "We have quite a few pictures, including some of the mob scenes," Hughes says.

In succeeding decades, nylon went on to revolutionize first women's fashion, then fashion generally. Garter belts disappeared. "Sheer" became a watchword. And as more synthetic fibers followed  — polyester, spandex — the world entered a new era of no-iron, super-durable, easy-to-wash, super-stretchy fabrics in riotous colors that could be seen everywhere, from Carnaby Street to Kmart.

And where, you may ask, was Wallace H. Carothers, inventor of nylon, as his product was transforming America?

His story, unlike nylon's, is a sad one. Only two months after nylon received its patent, the inventor — subject to depression from childhood — committed suicide in a Philadelphia hotel room. An expert chemist to the end, he mixed potassium cyanide with lemon juice, so that the citric acid would catalyze the effect of the poison. But his product continued to make waves all around the world — and off it.

"Think of nylon, starting with nylon clothes, and then the pinnacle: space suits," Hughes says. "It's an amazing diversity of products that came out of this."