How come linen wrinkles so much more than other fabrics?
asks Andi, via email. Linen is probably the oldest fabric, with bits and pieces dated to 8,000 BC. It is also the most wrinkle-prone fabric. (So along with food, furniture, and jewelry, linen-wrapped Egyptian mummies also carried their creases into eternity.) Linen is made from the fibers of the flax plant, the plant that gives us flax seeds and oil. Fabric made of linen is cooling in hot months, since can absorb up to 20 percent of its weight in moisture, without feeling especially damp. Linen is also incredibly strong, resisting stretching. Both linen and cotton, as well as rayon, are made from cellulose, the basic structural component of green plants. Cellulose is a polymer, a supermolecule made of many smaller molecules linked together in a long, straight chain. The smaller molecules are made from the sugar called glucose. (We can’t digest the sugars in cellulose fiber, but cows can, and do.) Side-by-side cellulose chains link up using hydrogen bonds, in much the same way water mol
