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Comment by DoingIsLearning | Hacker News Reader

> Unlike wool or cotton, polyester resists rather than absorbs water.

This is actually wrong and misleadingly glorifies poliester.

Wool does not absorb water, wool _adsorbs_ water and this makes all the difference in the world.

For instance a jacket made from Burel Wool would need hours of continous deluge before ever getting you wet on the inside.

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And even when wool is wet, it still keeps you very warm. As a young person in scouting, our troop master demonstrated this very effectively with cotton, poly, and wool socks and an ice bath. The wool sock still felt warm, were as the cotton was icy and the poly only a little better.

Wool is a remarkable fiber. The only real drawback is it's kind of uncomfortable unless you spring for the really high grade stuff.

Even if you don’t there’s potential to develop comfort with it. I grew up with extremely itchy military surplus wool blankets. I thought I’d resent that my whole life… now having gone through a variety of other fabrics and fibers, I’d certainly prefer a nicer wool but I wouldn’t complain about those blankets anymore. I adjusted and came to appreciate them, and even learned to care for them so they’d be more comfortable.

It's not like polyester resists forever either. Many outdoors folk have experienced "wet out." Resistance only goes so far and I'd rather wear wet wool than wet polyester.

Synthetics are still great though. They have many other benefits and are easy enough to avoid soaking through.

Many synthetics have a PFOA or PFOS treatment to provide the water resistance, which are pretty terrible chemicals when you end up exposed to them all day on your clothing. They also wear off rapidly with normal use, so previously water-resistant clothing loses that property after a few months to a year depending on how often it is worn and washed.

From 11 months ago, my take on that:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27139705

Thinking about it now, I could see how it started on the shoulders, where the straps of my backpack are, and on my back. Basically everywhere where (different) backpack(s) and straps thereof applied load, pressure, friction.

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