Fibre encyclopedia
Cupro
Also called cupro · kupro · cuprammonium rayon · Bemberg · CUP
Regenerated cellulose dissolved in a copper and ammonia solution, spun very fine. Most of it goes into lining.
Class
Regenerated
Comes from
From dissolved plant pulp
Where it comes from
Cupro is made from cellulose dissolved in cuprammonium solution. The pulp is often cotton linter, the short fibre left on the seed after ginning, which is a by-product of cotton spinning rather than a crop of its own.
How it feels to wear
Air
Some air moves through the fibre
Water
Takes water into the fibre
Heat
Lets body heat go
Stretch
No stretch of its own
Wear
Wears down sooner under rubbing
Cupro is spun finer than most regenerated cellulose, so it is smooth, it slides over other cloth, and it absorbs. Those three properties are the reason it is used as a lining under a jacket rather than as the jacket. It is weak when wet, as viscose is.
Care
- Hand wash cool or dry clean.
- Do not wring; support it while wet.
- Iron on the reverse at a low setting.
Cupro is usually cleaned as part of the garment it lines, on that garment's instruction.
End of life
Recycling route
Chemical recycling
Cupro is cellulose, so it belongs to the dissolving route in principle. Reaching it means being separated from the garment it was sewn into, and no sorting line does that.
In a blend
As a lining it is stitched to a different fibre, and a garment is sorted by its shell.
Skin notes
Mechanical
Very fine smooth filament, with no mechanical prickle route.
Chemical
Dyes and finishes are undeclared. Copper is part of the process rather than of the finished fibre, and the label states neither.
If your skin reacts to a garment, a dermatologist and patch testing are what can answer it. A label cannot, and neither can this page.
What the label cannot tell you
The label says cupro. It does not say whether the pulp was cotton linter or wood, and it does not say who made it, which matters because only a few mills in the world do.
Sources
- Regulation (EU) No 1007/2011 on textile fibre names and related labelling, Annex I. Checked 22 August 2026
- ISO 2076:2021, Textiles, man-made fibres, generic names. Checked 22 August 2026
Written from primary sources and in our own words. Where a figure could not be traced to a source anyone can open, it is not printed here.
Read the label you are holding
The scan surface reads one care label and names which questions it answers and which it leaves out. A passport says for one specific piece what a label cannot: the composition with its percentages, where the cloth came from, who worked on it, how to repair it and where it goes next.