Bamboo products seem to be everywhere now, from furniture and flooring to bed linens and sheets to toothbrushes and swabs, you can’t escape it. Long used in Chinese culture for everything from paper to building materials to hats, this versatile plant is seeing an increase in popularity all over the world.
The plant’s sustainability has a large part in this rise. Bamboo grows quickly with shallow roots, and only the shoots need to be harvested, leaving the stalks to grow again, unlike other plants like cotton. They are more water efficient than trees and lessen the impact of deforestation. The fibers of the plant are strong, durable, and suitable for many tasks.
Bamboo fabric and bamboo blends pop up in everything from underwear to entire sportswear brands like Free Fly and Tasc Perfomance. There’s certainly a reason for that! Bamboo’s wicking and absorbency powers also make it ideal for perhaps the sweatiest job in sportswear, headbands. This blog will go over 3 reasons why we love and choose to work with bamboo fabrics for our sweatbands.
-
Performance—While we get told over and over how breathable and natural cotton is and how good it is at keeping you cool, anyone who has worked out in the heat in cotton can also tell you how soggy they felt and describe any resultant chafing. Enter bamboo. Able to absorb more than cotton while drying quickly, bamboo and bamboo blends both keep you drier and help regulate your temperature as well.
Put to use in shirts and tank tops as well as leggings, and you can say goodbye to any painful post-run or post-workout showers. Put to use in headbands like the micro-terry bamboo in our Bamboo-Lined Sweatbands and the bamboo jersey in our Bamboo Accessory Multifunctional (BAM) and our 4” Bamboo Jersey Lined Sweatbands, and you can say goodbye to stinging eyes and being blinded by sweat.
-
Fit—We all want a little stretch, but we also want clothes and accessories to return to their initial shape. Bamboo blends, usually with spandex, excel at moving and stretching with you, whether you’re trying to nail that Dancer asana you’ve been working on or just trying to get a headband to stay on your head. Combined that with the fact it doesn’t shrink when cared for properly, and you end up with work out gear that lets you focus on your goals and nothing else.
For our headbands, this slight stretch and fit ensures your sweatband will stay put and hard at work absorbing and wicking away sweat while you reach for that PR or just run errands. Customer Emileigh Ledgerwood explains why she reaches for her Bamboo Lined Sweatbands, saying “I don’t have to worry about an itchy headband.” No one wants to worry about that!
-
Feel—Quite frankly, we’re in love with the feel of the bamboo fabrics as well. With the soft feel of silk or cashmere, we want our headbands and sweatbands to be like the comfy pajamas you reach for time and again. Gentle on all hair types, they’re like a giant soft hug.
Julia Valdez explains why bamboo’s pill resistance is important to the feel, “Piling can be ugly, making the fabric rough and cheap-looking, but more than this, piling can irritate the skin. The long fibres of bamboo resist fabric piling and stay soft for much longer.” This softness and lack of irritation makes it a perfect fabric to wear against the skin, even if you’ve had reactions to natural fibers in the past.
What kind of bamboo products do you own and love? Do you have bamboo blinds or floors or some type of bamboo clothing? What do you like most about it? Tell us in the comments!
Subscribe to this blog's RSS feed using https://www.ponyabands.com/blogs/ponya-talk.atom.
