Ventile, the ugly facts they don't tell you

Four years ago I posted a pretty critical piece about a fabric that at the time was on the brink of enjoying something of a comeback. The main point of the article was that the historical facts that were being bandied about might not actually be as historical as they were made out to be. There was much talk of RAF immersion suits saving the lives of fighter pilots that ended up in the cold sea, but research failed to turn up much in the way of actual evidence for this claim. In fact, Ventile didn’t seem all that big a deal. You can read the original article here.

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In this article, I want to make 3 points. These relate to the environment, to marketing and the alternative. Please pay attention.

Since my first article was posted, Ventile has increased massively in popularity, so much so that it’s just about everywhere at the moment.  More and more brands are using it, the same story is still being retold and the legend seemingly lives on. Oh, and the “Made in Britain” movement has embraced it.

The first point that really bugs me is the claims made for the eco-friendliness of the fabric. As the story goes, Ventile works by the cotton fibres swelling up and making it waterproof. This means the fabric gets wet, and when wet no more water will pass through. Now, this sounds well and good, although this is probably not what your average consumer wants. A wet jacket is a wet jacket and a wet jacket is not very pleasant, even though there may be no more water coming through once it’s wet. What works for a fire-hose might not be as suitable for a raincoat, right? And damp cotton surely can’t be much of a problem for the environment. Or can it?

The environment

So how does Ventile really work? Well, facts on the table, it’s treated with a DWR (Durable Water Repellant). This effectively kills all claims of Ventile being the eco-friendly outdoors fabric and also renders much of the historical facts null and void. Not just any DWR either, but fluorocarbons (PFC’s), which are now becoming known as genuinely nasty chemicals. From the website Greenpeace has set up on this topic:

“Per- and polyfluorinated chemicals are a family of man-made, fluorine-containing chemicals with unique properties to make materials stain resistant and waterproof. PFCs are incredibly resistant to break down; some have the potential to remain in the environment for hundreds of years after being released. They are turning up in unexpected places around the world. These pollutants have been found in secluded mountain lakes and snow, they’ve been discovered in the livers of polar bears in the Arctic and even in human blood.”

These C8 fluorocarbons are also strongly linked to some forms of cancer and have a half-life of between 4 and 8 years, so even if we stopped using them today, they’ll linger on for some time. The industry is hard at work replacing these long chain compounds with an alternative, shorter chain compounds  called C6, which although they don’t work as well and spread even easier than the long chain ones are are still legal to use. Ah, it’s such a familiar game, right? Also, even if the C6 fluorocarbons turn out to be benign, they are apparently so polluted by C8 that there is little actual difference when used.

Side note: Greenpeace is running a Detox Outdoor campaign with regards to PFC’s in outdoor clothing. They are following up a number of manufacturers, wanting them to commit to phasing out PFC’s before 2020. It’s quite a paradox that Patagonia, currently the darling of saving the planet is listed as “Out of the race” in this respect. 

The marketing

Another major selling point of Ventile has been that’s it’s a British fabric. Invented in Britain, made in Britain, sold as British. Only, it’s kind of not really all that British now and hasn’t been for a while. According to Wikipedia it hasn’t been made in Britain since before 2000. You will notice how cagey the Ventile labels are though, using words such as “developed in” or “originally woven in”, where they really really want you to understand it as “made in Britain”. These days it’s actually made by a Swiss company called Stotz as their “etaProof” brand, and then re-branded for the Ventile-hungry market. They don’t make any mention of it being treated with fluorocarbons on their website either.

This is from the UK Ventile website in September 2010 (it’s archived at Archive.org, if you would like to verify). Notice how it clearly says “Woven in the UK” and “Ventile® is not coated or laminated”.

These days the Ventile website has been taken over by Stotz, but the mention of water repellants is still kind of buried in the specifications. I’m not sure if it’s entirely correct to describe it as entirely natural and not coated? The wording is at the very least intended to convey something that most would argue is untrue. It’s no longer woven in the UK though, so some progress has been made.

I contacted Stotz and they confirmed that the production of Ventile is three processes, where spinning has taken place since the early 1980s in Switzerland, weaving since 1999 in Switzerland and dyeing/finishing since the 1970s in Switzerland and Austria. No small wonder the Ventile labels have the fuzzy “Developed in England since 1943” text.

In an odd occurrence of cosmic synchronicity, Ventile UK announced last week that Stotz was taking over the supply of Ventile. Hmm.

Link to kenuo

I have asked many of the companies currently making garments from Ventile what type of Ventile they use and whether it has been treated with fluorocarbons. Every single one has shrugged and pointed to the official line or something along the lines of “Yeah, the cotton swells like, used for fire-hoses and immersion suits, proper lifesaver! Awesome!”. Indeed.

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