people will soon discover the big downside of hydrophobic fabrics, if they are not already familiar with it from using “technical” “active wear”. hydrophobicity is pretty nice when you’re actually wearing (and sweating) in the garment. doesn’t work too well when you want to wash it. you need special detergents and more rinsing to wash the stuff as well as regular fabrics. if you go for the low to mid-range of the fabric pricing range (as anyone with dozens of “race shirts” can testify), you find that after 3 or 4 reasonably heavy sweat experiences, ordinary washing never really gets rid of the odors.
the lifecycle may be different for clothes that you don’t really actively sweat in, but we all still have armpits. if you down this route make sure to buy the right detergents for this sort of fabric, and rinse/wash ASAP to prevent ammonia based odors from accumulating.
