Shop Talk

For Father’s Day, suit shows greener side of Sears

Hey guys, this isn’t your pop’s polyester.

Just in time for Father’s Day shopping, Sears will roll out a line of men’s suits made of the first high-tech fabric that blends wool with polyester spun from recycled plastic soda bottles.

The suit separates, sold under Sears’ Covington Perfect brand, will be on racks in about 500 U.S. Sears stores in May.  Price: $175 for the jacket and $75 for the pants, according to Tim Danser, vice president of marketing for Bagir Group Ltd., the Israeli manufacturer that tailors the garments for Sears’ private label.

And get this: This suit is machine washable and can be tossed in the dryer, eliminating the need for dry cleaning and upping the eco-friendly ante, Danser said.

“This isn’t the polyester of the 1970s,” Moses Cohen, sales and marketing manager for N.I. Teijin Shoji (USA), Inc., the New York arm of Teijin, the Japanese chemical company that makes the suit fabric, said during a men’s fashion briefing at the swanky Kitano Hotel on Park Avenue in Manhattan.

Teijin, which developed fabrics made of recycled plastic blended with wool, viscose and cotton or with other synthetics, also partners with retailers to recycle used polyester clothing back into fabric and new clothes.

“This has a nicer hand to it,” Cohen said, running his fingers over the sleeve of his own jacket, acknowledging that “polyester still has some bad connotations” due to the quality of the “disco era” fabric of more than 30 years ago. (For devotees of the 1981 cult comedy film, “Polyester,” this is your cue: Thanks a lot, John Waters!)