In 2014, federal farm bill permitted cultivation of industrial hemp and states increasingly began, allowing the growth of this crop for commercial purposes after the United States stopped the production of hemp clothing with the marijuana tax even in 1937. If you know the properties of linen and how that feels and how that works, you already have a pretty good base of understanding how hemp garments are going to be. We're going to highlight the biggest similarities and some of the small differences between hemp and linen.

1) You basically already know how linen feels and acts and that means you basically know how hemp feels.

2) Both hemp and flax are made from the long fibers of plants and both are a very laborious textile to produce, varing in strength and quality.

The strength in some cases from the number of twists per unit length. If you were to have say a high-powered microscope you could tell the difference between a hemp and a linen fiber mostly because they have different cross sections.

Another clever way to differentiate them is in the wetting process they both have a bit of natural twist, but hemp will twist counterclockwise and linen will twist clockwise and the reason for that is that the orientation of the fibrils inside of these fiber are different.

They're both breathability, durability and moisure absorbing. They will get more and more soft through time with additional wearings and washings.

But these different of hemp clothing becomes insignificant on a single fiber basis.

They wrinkle extremely easily and this is something you kind of got to deal with unless you're going to put a lot of effort into always hang drying. Just let it be wrinkly and that's fine also both have hollow fibers which makes them in a way good insulators.

They both have pretty decent antibacterial, easily dyed, uv protection, and biodegradable. The hemp clothing has a roomier fit hemp fibers do tend to be a bit longer or a lot longer four to seven feet rather than sort of 1.5 to 3 feet for linen which on the margin is a good thing aslonger fiber length even within different.

Hemp has a higher yield per hectare and it's a relatively durable crop, requiring few chemical treatments because it's basically a weed which is also great for crop rotations. It has this more than three foot deep tap root that can help protect your soil from runoff.

The production of hemp is still so small while organic linen is much more available and much cheaper than organic hemp. Perhaps it could get significantly cheaper in the future if this market continues to grow.

When you first buy hemp clothing it's not going to be a fair comparison but please give it some time that it would be significantly more durable than a cotton tee with probably two to three the lifespan.