Egyptian cotton…seems as oxymoronic as English tea or Irish coffee. Ancient Egypt used linen and flax not cotton, both for the living and the dead. But Egyptian cotton is the new wonder fabric from an antique land, and unlike Egyptian linen, its magic has not been hidden and forgotten in pyramids for centuries.

Mohammed Ali Pasha is the one who had the foresight to introduce a wonderful long staple cotton to his country’s farmers in the Nile delta in the 1820s that catapulted them to the top of the quality ladder. Adroit timing also ensured that cotton from Egypt captured the British mill industry when the US stopped exporting their raw cotton during the Civil War. Piquantly, the cotton plant used by the Egyptians is a native American variety — Gossypium barbadense — but it has clearly taken to the sun and sand of the Nile.

Most items that do use Egyptian cotton display that fact very prominently as it is a beacon for quality (and luxury) hunters. The most wonderful and satisfying characteristic of this cotton is that the more it is washed the softer it gets and it never develops nubbles or lumps or gives off lint. That is because its strands are at least double the length of other cotton varieties. Yet, despite its fineness, there is a tough core, thanks to the long strands of cotton, that makes it resistant to wear and, especially, tear.

Nowadays, whether it is a shirt, dress, bedsheet or towel, the words ‘Finest Egyptian Cotton’ not only guarantee unbelievable softness and absorbency but also tough resilience.

Excerpted from an article by Reshmi R Dasgupta for The Economic Times