How To: Cotton vs. Wool
when wet & cold!
You have all heard that “cotton kills” and wool is the only way to go, but do you know why? The answer is pretty simple and makes complete sense when explained.
Let’s think about this for a moment. Cotton is a plant. Wool is from an animal. When we break down the reaction to cold and wet to the origin, the answer is right in front of us.
Cotton, designed to protect the seed, uses any heat that it can find to dry itself to keep living. And just because we have made it into a sock (base layer etc..) does not change how it reacts. In other words: when the cotton absorbs water, it not only fills all of the air pockets with water leaving no insulating barrier, but it also sucks the heat from your body to dry itself, leaving you unable to get warm.
Wool, however, is intended to protect the sheep that we shear it from. It wicks away moisture and although the wool absorbs the water like cotton, it still maintains a barrier to trap the heat that your body produces to stay with your body just as it protects the sheep. This keeps your feet warmer, drier, and stink free!
People often say “but cotton is so much more comfortable than wool”. The fact is most of the mid to high end wool that you buy now is from the Spanish breed of sheep called the Merino. Merino has been known to have the finest and softest wool. (SmartWool and WigWam are two of the companies that make socks with Merino wool.)
So now that you know the why… why wouldn't you choose something that was designed by nature to work for us and not against us?
(In this article I attempted to explain the advantages of wool over cotton only, leaving out synthetics. Synthetic fabrics are an excellent alternative because they share the same characteristics of wool without the added water weight that wool absorbs.)
