Lotus silk is one of the rarest fabrics in the world, but what makes it so expensive?

2020-11-17 1

Lotus silk is one of the rarest fabrics in the world. Produced only in small scale across Cambodia, Myanmar, and more recently Vietnam, this natural fibre is extracted by only a few skilled craftspeople across the world.

But making this "silk" isn’t easy. Extracting enough lotus silk for one scarf can take two months, and the final product can cost 10 times as much as regular silk. So just how is it made, and what makes it so expensive?