WSJ News on Rayon Hawaiian Shirting

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal posted a piece about rayon Hawaiian shirts, vests, and designer dresses making a comeback and I thought it was kind of interesting that they oughtright attribute that to an increase in cotton prices. But my in-depth knowledge of the industry got the best of me, even though they tossed out some data, I couldn’t help but wonder if the article on rayon was still wrote from the perspective of being on the outside looking in.

“Cotton prices surged 91% in 2010, leaving designers and clothes makers scrambling to find lower-cost alternatives. One of their favorite replacements is rayon, an 80-year-old fabric whose last golden age was in the 1980s, when it was used in everything from Hawaiian shirts to sequined vests”

While I don’t disagree that cotton prices surged in 2010, lets be fair and state that textile costs have surged consistently every year, and for all fabrics. Japan is clearly the largest importer of raw cotton from the USA and when the price goes up here its naturally passed along when we purchase the finished textile. But what’s not factored into the WSJ article is the cost of petroleum, something of which Hawaiian printed fabrics are very dependent on, as many processes are petroleum based in one way or another. I just have to wonder why a key textile ingredient was left out of the article, dont you? I did some quick price checking with some of our importers on 1/7/2011 and it appears that rayon ROT is currently priced 18 cents above cotton. So either the importers did not get the memo or the WSJ data is a bit skewed or slanted to impress shareholders of wood pulp companies.

I also found it intriguing that they failed to focus on Indonesia, which is where most of the rayon fabric is produced. Wave Shoppe’s rayon mens Hawaiian shirts are made from very high quality imported rayon, but  frankly we have never seen any rayon fabric offered where the country of origin was Japan.

“Rising cotton prices are pushing a forgotten retro staple back onto the fashion runway” Retro? My lord women looking to wear a higher end dress have never opted for cotton, its been rayon or nothing for so many years that I can’t count them all. Wave Shoppe is introducing an entirely new line of rayon and cotton Hawaiian dresses this year and I assure you that the rayon will outsell the cotton, even though a finished rayon garment is higher priced.

So my final thought on all this is that this WSJ article is just another power play to push a material (rayon) that has higher profit margins, than it is to outline that cotton shirting prices are going up.

Full WSJ article