What is Lotus Silk? Spotlight on a Rare Natural Silk

Have you heard of lotus silk? I’ll admit I hadn’t until I chatted with Angelica of Terrai, a new sustainable lifestyle goods company who works with South-East Asian artisans to transform natural materials into coveted products like the silk scrunchies below. Turns out, it’s a pretty incredible vegan silk made from the stems of lotus flowers, which are used throughout Cambodia where their product is made. They take the discarded stems of those flowers and turn them into beautiful goods in a pretty spectacular process.

Below, Terrai shows us how it’s done.

what is lotus silk?

The clip below from Business Insider shows us how this fiber is made, and what makes it so expensive. In traditional silk, insects are doing most of the work. But with lotus silk, each strand must be extracted from the plant by hand. It is truly a delicate process.

Lotus silk is a rare fabric considered to be the most sustainable fabric in the world as its production requires no electricity, petrol or chemicals to produce. Natural textiles are a lost practice within Cambodia, and Terrai is proud to bring them at the forefront thanks to this collection. The full range of Terrai scrunchies use fabrics from lotus, banana microfiber and kapok blends, and are handcrafted, no-dye and 100% biodegradable.

 

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We take the discarded stems and extract the thin fibers from them, which are then rolled together to form the thread. The thread then needs to be processed while they are still wet otherwise they will break, it’s an incredibly delicate process! Once dry, the threads are hand-spooled and put into the loom for weaving. The preparation of a loom takes approximately one week. When the room is ready, the threads are processed into fabric. Then we turn them into our beautiful vegan silk scrunchies!

Thanks to Angelica + the Terrai team for sharing the magic of lotus silk!