The Standard

To get listed on Jacob Gray Goods every product must be made from fabric that is free of synthetics, at any percentage. That single rule is our defining characteristic. Let's dive deeper into that here.

Our uncompromising baseline: no synthetic fibers

A garment clears our baseline when its disclosed fabric contains only plant and animal fibers. Cotton, linen, hemp, wool, and silk pass. A fabric that has any % of synthetic material does not pass, full stop. What we exclude, and why, is set out at the bottom of this page.

What do Natural and Pure mean?

Everything that clears the baseline is labeled one of two ways.

Natural is the baseline itself. Synthetic-free products made from plant fibers, animal fibers, and/or regenerated cellulosics.

A note on regenerated cellulosics. They are fibers made by breaking down plant matter, like wood pulp, into a thick liquid and spinning it back out as a thread. What comes out is still plant material rather than plastic. These fibers are sold as lyocell, modal, viscose and cupro, among others. They stay in Natural and do not reach Pure, which is reserved for fibers that reach the fabric without being chemically dissolved and reconstituted the way these are.

Pure is the stricter tier. A product earns Pure when every plant fiber in it is organic-certified under GOTS or OCS, the certificate or license number checks out on the certifier's public database, and no regenerated cellulosics are present. Organic certification on a plant fiber verifies the crop was grown without synthetic pesticides, which is the main chemical concern with a fiber like cotton. An organic claim we cannot confirm by number stays in Natural until it is validated.

Animal fibers work differently. A sweater made entirely of wool, cashmere, alpaca, or silk can reach Pure with no certificate at all, because animal fibers are not crops and do not raise the same pesticide concern. What Pure comes down to is two things: every plant fiber in the product is certified organic, and there are no regenerated cellulosics.

What we check, and what we don't yet

We filter based on the fiber composition label, the one disclosure the law requires to travel with the garment from the factory to your closet. The fabric is the largest part of what you wear and the only part every brand has to declare. If you want to read that label yourself, our guide to reading a fiber composition label walks through it line by line.

We want to state clearly that we recognize the fabric is not the whole garment. Sewing thread, elastic, interfacing, trims, and chemical finishes sit outside what the label has to disclose. At this stage we do not independently verify these other components of the garment. Our aim is to push the industry to disclose more than the fabric. Until it does, we hold the line we can actually verify: every product here is synthetic-free at the fabric level.

What we exclude, in more detail

Polyester, nylon, acrylic, elastane, and polypropylene are the fibers that disqualify a fabric here. All of them are plastics, spun into thread and woven into cloth. Elastane is the one that surprises people most often. It goes by spandex and by Lycra, and it is usually present in small amounts, often two or three percent. Those small amounts disqualify a fabric here just as much as a large one would.

A note on recycled polyester. Where a synthetic came from does not change the rule. Recycled polyester is still polyester. Newer biobased synthetics, where nylon or elastane is spun from castor oil or corn sugar instead of petroleum, still behave like plastic in your washing machine and in the ground. All of them sit on the excluded list.

A note on acetate. Acetate starts from plant cellulose but ends up behaving like plastic, so we exclude it. It is often sold under cellulosic-sounding names and grouped with lyocell and modal in marketing copy, with Naia the one you are most likely to see.

A note on chemical finishes. Certain chemical finishes are excluded too: flame retardants, formaldehyde-based wrinkle-free treatments, PFAS water-repellents, and phthalates. When a product advertises one of these, we reject it. However, brands are not required to disclose finishes at all, so a product could still carry one the brand never mentions, and we would have no way to know.

A few materials we exclude for other reasons

Fur, angora, and exotic skins such as python, crocodile, and ostrich all technically pass the synthetic-free test, but we exclude them anyway. Fur farming, angora production, and the trade in wild and exotic skins have a welfare record that is poor enough that we have made the judgment call to not include them.

The standard is deliberately strict, and the strictness is the point. Someone who wants to avoid plastic against their child's, or their own, skin, can act on a clear yes or no. They cannot act on "mostly."