Fibre encyclopedia
Pineapple leaf fibre
Also called pineapple fibre · serat nanas · piña · pineapple leaf fibre · serat daun nanas · pina · nanas
Leaf fibre from the pineapple plant, taken from the leaves the fruit harvest leaves behind. Long, stiff and low in stretch, and for piña cloth joined by hand rather than spun.
Class
Natural
Comes from
From a plant
Where it comes from
The pineapple is grown for its fruit, and the fibre comes from the leaves that harvest leaves behind. The leaf is scraped until only the fibre strands remain, then washed and dried. For piña cloth those strands are knotted end to end by hand instead of being spun, which is why the cloth is made in narrow widths. Pineapple is not one of the fibre names in Annex I of the European labelling rules, so a composition line has no standard word for it.
How it feels to wear
Air
Air moves through the fibre easily
Water
Takes water into the fibre
Heat
Lets body heat go
Stretch
No stretch of its own
Wear
Holds up to hard rubbing
Pineapple fibre is long, stiff and barely stretches, so it holds its own shape rather than following the body, and it creases where it is folded. It takes water into the fibre as other plant fibres do. The cloth is usually woven open and sheer, so what gives way first is the crease line in the cloth rather than the fibre in it.
Care
- Hand wash in cool water.
- Do not wring. Twisting breaks the fibre at the bend.
- Dry flat, in shade.
- Store rolled rather than folded, so no single crease carries the weight.
Every care point here follows from one property: the fibre is stiff and does not come back after it is bent, so wear arrives at the folds rather than across the surface.
End of life
Recycling route
No route running at scale
There is no sorted textile collection for pineapple fibre. The volume that reaches a waste stream is small, and no route has been built to take it.
In a blend
Pineapple fibre is seldom used on its own, and once it is joined with another fibre inside a yarn the two are not separated again.
Skin notes
Mechanical
Pineapple fibre is stiff and its cut ends are hard, so a coarse cloth stands away from the skin and is felt at its edges rather than across its surface. A finely scraped cloth is not felt that way, and the label does not distinguish them.
Chemical
Sheer plant-fibre cloth is bleached and stiffened before it is made up, and stiffening is applied again at finishing. European rules limit certain substances in textiles that touch the skin. A label declares neither the substances nor the limits.
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 pineapple fibre. It does not say whether the strands were joined by hand or run through a mill, and it does not say what was joined with them.
Sources
- Regulation (EU) No 1007/2011 on textile fibre names and related labelling, Annex I. Checked 22 August 2026
- Regulation (EC) No 1907/2006 (REACH), Annex XVII entry 72, substances in textile articles in contact with skin, applying from 1 November 2020. Checked 22 August 2026
- European Commission Joint Research Centre, techno-scientific assessment of the management options for used and waste textiles in the European Union, 2023
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.