where does fleece come from

Fleece for clothing today usually comes from plastic, not sheep.

Two meanings of “fleece”

• In traditional textiles, fleece means the woolly coat shorn from a sheep or similar animal, taken off in one piece during shearing.

• In modern fashion (“fleece jackets,” “fleece blankets”), it almost always means a synthetic fabric that imitates wool but is actually made from polyester.

What modern fleece is made of

• Most modern fleece fabric is made from polyester fibers, a plastic polymer typically derived from petroleum, especially polyethylene terephthalate (PET).

• The process usually involves melting plastic pellets, extruding them into fine threads, spinning them into yarn, knitting them into fabric, then brushing the surface to raise the soft, fuzzy nap we recognize as fleece.

Recycled and alternative sources

• Many brands now produce fleece using recycled PET, often from plastic water bottles, to reduce waste and lower the demand for virgin petroleum-based plastic.

• There are also “fleece” fabrics made from natural fibers like cotton or wool blends, but these are less common than polyester-based fleece and are usually marketed specifically as cotton fleece or wool fleece.

Why it’s called “fleece” if it’s plastic

• The name was borrowed because the fabric was designed to mimic the warmth, loft, and fuzzy texture of a sheep’s coat while being lighter and quicker-drying than wool.

• Polar fleece as a category was developed around 1979–1981 by the company Malden Mills, in collaboration with Patagonia, explicitly as a synthetic replacement for wool pile fabrics.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.