Cupro is a ‘regenerated cellulose’ fabric made from cotton waste. It is made using the teeny tiny silky cotton fibres, known as linter, that stick out of the cottonseed and are too small to spin. The linter is dissolved into a cuprammonium solution, which is a mixture of copper and ammonium, dropped into caustic soda, then spun into fibre. Much like Tencel and Modal, cupro is a plant-based material that is chemically processed to produce the resulting fabric.

Cupro is said to have all the positive qualities of silk: it’s silky-smooth and drapes just like the luxurious material. First invented in the 1900s in Germany, cupro is also commonly known as ‘Bemberg’ (from the German manufacturer, J.P. Bemberg), as well as ‘ammonia silk’ and ‘cuprammonium rayon’.