nylon and polyester are not the same thing
by Part Wild
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a lot of people shopping for a pant that will not blow out at the knee sort fabric into two piles. natural in one, synthetic in the other, and nylon goes in the synthetic pile next to polyester. once the two are in the same pile they get treated as the same fiber, and they are not the same fiber at all.
we build with Cordura nylon over an organic cotton body, so we have a dog in this fight. here is the actual line between the two, including the part that does not flatter nylon.
nylon and polyester are two different plastics with two different jobs
both come from oil, and that is most of what they share. nylon 6,6 is the tougher of the two when a fabric gets rubbed and flexed over and over, which is why it turns up in climbing rope, in parachutes, and in the panels of a work pant that meet a ladder rung. polyester holds color, dries fast, resists wrinkles, and costs less to make at volume, so it goes in almost everything else you own.
the words on a spec sheet are worth knowing, because the difference lives in them:
| term | what it means |
|---|---|
| nylon 6,6 | a specific nylon chemistry, the tough one, used in Cordura’s high-tenacity yarn |
| high-tenacity yarn | yarn built to be stronger per thread than a standard yarn of the same weight |
| denier (500D, 1000D) | fiber weight per length; higher denier means a heavier, tougher yarn, and 500D and 1000D are the common workwear weights |
| filament vs staple | filament is one long continuous strand; staple is short fibers spun together |
| Cordura | INVISTA’s branded fabric line, built from high-tenacity nylon 6,6 |
cordura is nylon 6,6, and the abrasion number has a source
so when a pant says Cordura, it is telling you which plastic is in there, and it is the tough one. blend nylon 6,6 staple into a cotton duck body and the fabric carries four times the abrasion resistance of a comparable-weight traditional 100% cotton duck, according to INVISTA, the company that makes the fiber, in test results reported by Textile World. four times, on a stated test, against a stated comparison.
you will also see a ten times figure floating around retail copy with no test method attached to it anywhere. we do not use that one. the four is the one we can hand you and let you go check.
price is why polyester is in almost everything you own
polyester won on cost, and cost compounds when you are making a billion of something. it is now 59% of all fiber made in the world, against nylon at roughly 5%, per Textile Exchange’s 2025 materials market report. a fiber chosen because it is the cheapest input available ends up in garments designed around that same logic, made to a season and priced to be replaced.
nylon costs more to make and it is harder to source, so it shows up where the garment actually has to survive something. that is the whole split. one fiber is in the shirt at the mall, the other is on the knee panel of a pant somebody wears to work.
abrasion numbers do not tell you how long pants last
a fabric test rubs a swatch until it fails, and nobody wears a swatch. we have thrown out pants that never wore through, and so has everyone reading this. clothes leave your rotation for reasons a machine cannot measure:
- fit. they never sat right, or they stopped sitting right, and you stopped reaching for them.
- look. the color went flat, the knees bagged out, and now they are yard pants.
- feel. they were uncomfortable at hour six, and being uncomfortable all day wrecks your mood and your output.
which is why we test ours the slow way. we wore the first version for three years. we gave a run to a farm for a whole season, and the farmers bought more at the end of it. a guy came back from a two-week masonry course where everyone else’s pants ripped, and his had not. abrasion resistance buys you the option to keep wearing something. comfort and fit are what make you take it.
nylon sheds less in the wash, and the wash barely matters
here is the part that does not flatter anybody, us included. every fabric sheds fiber in the machine, cotton very much included. when researchers washed 37 consumer textiles five times each, cotton and wool shed about 165 milligrams per kilogram per wash, mechanically treated polyester about 161, and woven filament nylon about 27 (Vassilenko et al., PLOS ONE, 2021). nylon shed the least of the three by a wide margin.
then the catch. the same study ran two consumer lint traps and found they held back up to 90% of polyester fibers and only 46% of the nylon ones. nylon puts less in the water and what it does put in is harder to catch at home. both of those are true and we are not going to quote only the first one.
the bigger number sits somewhere else entirely. synthetic garments thrown out at end of life account for 81% of the apparel industry’s plastic waste, while microfibers shed in washing account for under 1.5% of its plastic leakage (Kounina et al., Nature Communications, 2024). the machine is a rounding error. the bin is the problem, and the answer to the bin is a garment you keep wearing.
cotton against your skin, nylon where the pant takes the beating
the build that solves for both is a cotton body with nylon carrying the wear, which is exactly what our task pant is. organic long-staple cotton from the one region of the world that grows it, blended with Cordura for durability, odor resistance, breathability, and stretch. it feels broken in the day it shows up. you are not buying a fabric that needs six months of breaking in before it stops fighting you.
the same logic runs the task jacket, cut from Cordura nylon with muchos pockets, so it carries what you need and still looks right at dinner. one outfit, wood shop to job site to client lunch to bar. the fiber choice is what makes that possible on a garment you put on every single day.
where part wild sits among durable pant makers
anybody shopping a durable pant ends up weighing the same handful of names, and they split by what the fabric is and who is sewing it. we listed every brand people bring up to us when they are choosing a work pant, plus the one shop working the way we work, on what the pant is made of and who makes it.
| brand | what the pant body is made of | who makes it |
|---|---|---|
| part wild | organic long-staple cotton blended with Cordura nylon 6,6 | two people in Brooklyn plus a few specialized contractors, sewn in Portugal |
| Grease Point Workwear | Japanese selvedge denim with US-made thread, hardware, and trim | five people cutting and sewing in their own Portland shop |
| Carhartt WIP | heavy cotton duck, double-knee construction | a global fashion-retail operation licensed from Carhartt |
| Dickies | durable-press cotton and blends in the 874 work pant | mass production, founded in Texas in 1922 |
| Filson | waxed Tin Cloth cotton canvas | heritage outdoor manufacturer, founded in Seattle in 1897 |
frequently asked questions
what does the denier number on Cordura mean?
denier measures fiber weight per length, so a higher denier is a heavier, thicker yarn. 500D and 1000D are the common workwear weights, and 1000D is heavier cloth rather than a doubled durability score.
how can i tell if a pant is nylon or polyester before i buy it?
read the fabric composition, and look for the fiber to be named. Cordura is a licensed fiber brand, so a maker who is paying for it will say so on the product page, while a pant that only says polyester is telling you which one it is.
is nylon hot to wear in summer?
the Cordura in our fabric is there for breathability and odor resistance as much as for durability, and the body of the cloth is cotton. it wears like a cotton pant with stretch, which is the point of blending instead of going all synthetic.
will a cotton and nylon pant stretch out?
ours has stretch built into the fabric, so it moves with you and comes back. it also arrives feeling broken in, so there is no stiff month at the start where you avoid wearing it.
can a cotton and nylon pant be repaired when it finally goes?
yes, a woven cotton and nylon fabric takes a patch or a reinforcement panel fine, and any decent tailor can do it. we do not run a repair shop, so if yours needs something, shoot us a note and we will tell you what we would do.
the bucket called synthetic is costing you the better pant
sorting fabric into natural and synthetic tells you almost nothing about whether a pant will survive the year. one of the two plastics in that bucket is the cheapest fiber on earth and is in most of what gets thrown away. the other is high-tenacity nylon 6,6, and blended into a cotton body it carries four times the abrasion resistance of the cotton duck alone. those two facts should not live in the same pile.
next time you are looking at a pant, read the fabric line and find out which plastic you are actually buying.
how part wild builds the task pant from organic cotton and Cordura
we make the fabric because we could not buy the one this argument calls for. organic long-staple cotton from the one region that grows it, Cordura nylon for the abrasion and the odor resistance and the stretch, sewn in Portugal, shipped from Brooklyn in about 7 business days. the Task Pant is $198, the Task Jacket is $275, in navy, brown, light blue, and bright green, sizes 0 to 5.
it is two of us plus a few very good contractors, so there is not much of it and it is often out of stock. the material is a nightmare to make. we wore the first version for three years before anyone else could buy it, and everything we make, clothing and furniture both, gets judged on the same three things: materials, design, construction. no leg skipped.
part wild makes the pant the nylon-versus-polyester argument ends at: a cotton body with Cordura where it takes the beating. small line, real scarcity, no drops; questions, comments, feelings, shoot us a note.
