I've always liked the Alec Guinness movie The Man in the White Suit, especially that bloop-bloop-bleep-bloop soundtag on the process Alec, the naive research chemist, uses to make the bright white thread that is woven into a fabric that never wears out and never gets dirty. It's a classic British Ealing comedy of the 1950s.
The other day, I found a post on William Gibson's blog about a Swiss company that is making "nanosphere" self-cleaning cloth, currently going into production. How well it works, how much it costs, how much they produce, and how durable it is, the other half of the fictional properties of Alec's White Suit, I don't know; but here it comes, ready or not.
A few years ago, Worldchanging reported on another self-cleaning cloth. This one came from Hong Kong Polytechnic University and used nano-engineered titanium dioxide [titanium may be becoming the material of the 21st century]. The fabric eliminates stains and dirt when exposed to the sun. I don't know if they've gone into production yet.
The Man in the White Suit is edging into fact. From a couple of different directions.
Previous Related Posts:
Science Fiction Fairy Tale: The Filter Scarf
Two other Science Fiction Fairy Tales
Displaying the World, a speculation on new visualization technologies based upon what's available now to help you discover A Place in Universe