NoKill Mag Profiles AIZOME: "A Textile Health Company" Asking What Belongs Against Your Skin

AIZOME was recently featured in NoKill Mag, the independent sustainable fashion and lifestyle publication. In an article titled "AIZOME Textiles Creates Bedding and Clothing That Might Actually Be Better for Your Health," writer Katya Moorman spoke with AIZOME co-founder Michel May for the second installment of her series "People Doing Things Differently." Here's a recap of what the article covers.

Why NoKill Mag Took a Closer Look at Textiles

Moorman opens with a familiar observation from her own sustainability journey: large corporations don't always have consumers' best interests at heart, pointing to examples like chemical flame retardants on children's pajamas and artificial dyes in candy. She has written extensively about her concerns with synthetic clothing, but notes that only recently did she become aware that applying chemical dyes and finishes to natural fibers may not be much better.

That led her to AIZOME, which she introduces as one of the companies already addressing the problem.

"A Textile Health Company"

According to the article, Michel May describes AIZOME as a textile health company rather than simply a bedding or apparel brand. Moorman admits the phrase brought out her inner skeptic, but writes that it changes the question the company starts with. As May put it:

"We do not ask, 'How do we make a nicer bedsheet or shirt?' We ask, 'What should be in a textile that touches the human body for thousands of hours?'"

Where the Question Came From

The article recounts how that question first came to May while his mother was being treated for cancer. She developed dark sores on her skin during treatment, and her oncologist suggested the dyes in her bedding might be contributing to the irritation. May was skeptical, but the family changed the bedding and the sores disappeared. As NoKill Mag notes, May is clear that this was not a scientific experiment or proof of causation. Still, it sent him down the path of investigating color and chemistry in textiles.

What Is Actually in a Bedsheet?

Moorman points out that a bedsheet seems like the most basic product imaginable: a large piece of fabric, labeled with its fiber, its country of origin and maybe a thread count. But a sheet labeled 100 percent organic cotton can tell you almost nothing about what was used to bleach, dye, soften or finish it.

Packaged food has a nutrition label and cosmetics have ingredient lists, but textiles have nothing comparable. The article notes that this gap is discussed in sustainable fashion circles but is rarely something shoppers think about when buying sheets.

The Textile Health Facts Label

To address this, AIZOME created what it calls the Textile Health Facts label, inspired by the familiar Nutrition Facts panel on food packaging. NoKill Mag reports that AIZOME worked with designer Peter Gorse, known for a fashion "nutrition label" previously covered by Vogue, on perfecting the label.

According to the article, the label goes beyond fiber content to include:

• The coloration method
• Important processing and finishing inputs
• Substances deliberately excluded
• Relevant testing
• Manufacturing origin
• Traceability

AIZOME products also carry manufacturing dates and batch numbers connected to information about the cotton, dyeing records and construction. Moorman observes that this is normal in food and medicine, where a manufacturer may need to trace a problem back to a specific batch, but "considerably less normal for a pillowcase."

May told NoKill Mag that AIZOME doesn't intend to keep the approach to itself: "Our ambition is not to keep this proprietary forever. The real success would be other textile companies adopting the same level of transparency."

Organic Cotton Is Not the Whole Story

One of the article's central points is that buying organic cotton doesn't guarantee chemical purity. "Organic" describes how the cotton was grown, not what happens to it afterward. Moorman writes that clothing is highly chemically engineered and can be bleached, dyed with synthetic colorants, and treated with optical brighteners, fragrances, formaldehyde wrinkle treatments or PFAS before it reaches the consumer.

Buying organic cotton isn't meaningless, she notes, but it doesn't tell the complete story of the finished textile.

The article describes AIZOME's approach: start with organic, unbleached cotton and keep everything that follows as simple as possible. AIZOME uses plant dyes instead of conventional synthetic dyes wherever color is required, and avoids synthetic antimicrobial coatings, PFAS, formaldehyde wrinkle treatments and optical brighteners. Moorman writes that simply learning what AIZOME doesn't do made her realize how much is normally done to textiles without our knowledge.

Importantly, the article notes that May is careful not to suggest that anything natural is automatically safe or that anything synthetic is automatically dangerous. The real difference, as NoKill Mag frames it, is that AIZOME wants to know exactly what has gone into the textile and why it is there. Given how many hours sheets and clothes spend against our bodies, Moorman concludes that "does not feel like an unreasonable standard."

How Do You Dye Cotton With Plants?

Moorman admits she pictured natural dyeing as something low-tech, done next to the plants in a garden. AIZOME's process, she writes, is "closer to a laboratory than a garden."

The article explains that AIZOME uses sonochemistry, applying ultrasonic sound waves to help plant compounds penetrate cotton fibers. Because botanical color is difficult to apply evenly and make last, this lets AIZOME avoid many of the synthetic fixatives and other chemicals typically used to achieve depth and consistency. In Moorman's words: "sound energy does some of the work that additional chemistry usually would."

NoKill Mag lists the plant sources behind AIZOME's colors:

• Indigo for blues
• Madder root for pink and rose tones
• Gallnut for greys
• Undyed cotton is also available

The result, according to the article, is sheets, duvet covers, towels and clothing designed to be washed, worn and lived with like anything else.

Products People Actually Want to Use

For all the innovation involved, the article stresses that the most important part of the equation is still people. May explained the move from bedding into clothing:

"Bedding was the natural starting point because we spend roughly a third of our lives in bed. But our community kept asking the obvious next question: why can't I have the same philosophy against my skin during the day?"

That led AIZOME to expand into clothing, which it calls Healthwear. As May put it: "Health may be why someone discovers it. Comfort is why they keep wearing it."

Moorman notes this is something responsible brands occasionally forget. A T-shirt can have a flawless origin story, but if it's heavy, stiff or scratchy it will live in a drawer. Sheets can avoid every unwanted treatment imaginable, but they still need to be something you look forward to getting into at night.

What Does "Textile Health" Actually Mean?

The article argues that if AIZOME only combined organic cotton with plant dyes, it would be great but not especially unique. What sets it apart, according to NoKill Mag, is that AIZOME has conducted or commissioned testing related to chemical residues, skin irritation, and antimicrobial and antifungal performance. Its bedding, towels and Healthwear are manufactured within the company's FDA Class I medical-device establishment registration and device listing framework.

Because wording matters here, Moorman quoted May directly:

"We conduct and commission testing on specific properties of our textiles and plant dyes, including antimicrobial and antifungal performance. Those results tell us what was demonstrated under the conditions of a particular test. They do not automatically prove that a textile will prevent, treat or cure a disease in a person."

"Likewise, FDA establishment registration and device listing are not the same as FDA approval, clearance, certification or endorsement. They do not mean that FDA independently tested AIZOME or validated every health claim we make."

"For us, the value of operating within a Class I medical-device framework is the discipline it creates around documentation, traceability, manufacturing and claims. Where we have data, we should say exactly what was tested. Where evidence is still emerging, we should say so. And where something has not been demonstrated, we should not imply that it has."

Moorman writes that she finds this more convincing than the usual wellness-brand approach of stretching one promising fact until a product practically claims to change your life. Instead, she says, AIZOME is helping define what "better" textiles might actually mean.

What If This Became the Standard?

The article closes on the idea that consumers have a right to know far more about anything designed to stay against their skin for hours at a time. According to NoKill Mag, AIZOME is showing that bedding and clothing can be made with fewer unnecessary inputs, greater traceability and more honest claims, without forgetting that products still need to be beautiful, comfortable and practical.

Moorman suggests the real measure of AIZOME's success may not be how many sheet sets it sells, but whether more textile companies are eventually pushed to answer the same question: "What, exactly, are you putting against our bodies?"

Read the Full Article

You can read Katya Moorman's full article, "AIZOME Textiles Creates Bedding and Clothing That Might Actually Be Better for Your Health," on NoKill Mag: nokillmag.com