Clothing is expected to meet a growing range of demands. Consumers want jeans that offer stretch, keep them cool, last for years, and are made with environmental practices they can trust. However, few buyers see the many decisions and processes involved in bringing these qualities together.
That process begins with fiber and yarn, moves through fabric production and finishing, and ends with a garment on a store rack. Decisions made at each stage influence the product’s performance and the claims a brand can make about it. As consumers and regulators pay closer attention to environmental claims, providing clear and reliable evidence has become increasingly important.
Katherine Barrows has spent her career addressing this challenge. She studied textile technology at NC State University and began her career in research and development at Unifi, a North Carolina-based yarn manufacturer. She later moved into product integrity at the same company. Today, she is part of the innovation team at Kontoor Brands, where her work brings her closer to the finished garment and the person who wears it.
Few people have experience across both ends of the textile supply chain. Her career has given her a clear understanding of how science, design, and business work together.
Let’s explore how Katherine connects textile innovation with product integrity and consumer needs!
A Journey Across the Textile Value Chain
Katherine began her career with a technical foundation, studying Textile Technology at NC State University’s College of Textiles. Her education introduced her to the industry’s technical vocabulary and its many disciplines, including science, engineering, manufacturing, design, and business. This unique combination of art and science drew her to textiles.
After graduating, she joined Unifi Manufacturing, a synthetic yarn manufacturer headquartered in North Carolina, working in its research and development department. The role exposed her to different products and applications and allowed her to evaluate technologies by examining how changes in base materials could deliver specific product outcomes.
Much of her work involved testing and evaluating new products and technologies developed by the R&D team. Through this experience, she learned that an idea must be assessed to determine whether it can deliver the expected performance. A promising technology must withstand rigorous validation testing, and understanding what it does, the conditions under which it works, and whether its results can be reproduced are essential.
For her, data became an important part of evaluating innovation, but understanding what that data means for the end user proved equally important. A test result is useful only when the properties being tested are understood and the test reflects the product’s real-world application.
Product Integrity and Responsible Innovation
Katherine later expanded her work into product integrity and stewardship, gaining another perspective on technical performance, customer expectations, and responsible product claims.
She co-managed internal certifications for the company’s yarn products, including technical performance and recycled-content claims. This work brought her into contact with R&D, quality, marketing, customer relationships, and third-party testing.
For technical performance claims, third-party testing helped ensure that marketing claims about fabrics and finished products were supported by appropriate evidence. Her work also involved validating recycled-content claims to determine whether customers could substantiate their statements and, in some cases, receive co-marketing support.
These responsibilities shaped her understanding of sustainability and product credibility. Consumers increasingly want products with a positive environmental story, but good intentions alone are not enough. Claims must be accurate, substantiated, and understandable.
A yarn’s capabilities do not automatically determine what can responsibly be claimed about a finished product. Once yarn is knitted or woven into fabric and incorporated into a garment, construction, dyeing, finishing, garment design, and other manufacturing processes can influence its performance.
For her, “Product integrity goes beyond compliance. It protects the credibility of the product, the company, and the industry.” Every claim asks customers to place their trust in a product, and that trust must be earned through transparency and consistency.
From Yarn Technology to the Finished Product
Moving from yarn manufacturing into the Innovation department at Kontoor Brands gave Katherine a different perspective on product development. Having spent years closer to the raw material side of the supply chain, she now works further downstream, closer to the finished product and the consumer.
Earlier in her career, she focused primarily on how a technology could be applied in yarn form and provide a measurable user benefit. Now, she can evaluate how different components work together within a finished garment and contribute to the overall consumer experience.
How should a garment feel? What performance attributes should it have? What does the consumer expect? How do material choices affect manufacturability, cost, durability, and aesthetics? Most importantly, does the innovation actually make the finished product better?
Working within an apparel brand has given her more opportunities to influence what reaches consumers, from identifying a product opportunity to material selection, development, testing, and the finished product.
This broader perspective has also shaped her approach to leadership. A material scientist may identify an opportunity that a designer has not considered, while a product developer may recognize a manufacturing constraint. A sustainability expert may raise concerns that others have overlooked, and a testing expert can help determine whether an idea delivers what it promises.
“Innovation works best when these perspectives are respected and brought together around a shared objective,” she notes.
Turning Research into Market-Ready Innovation
One example of Katherine’s contribution to textile innovation at Unifi was the development of a cooling yarn platform. The technology responded to a trend within apparel: rising average global temperatures and increasing consumer demand for clothing that makes people feel cooler.
Working alongside other R&D team members, she helped identify more than 30 variations of polyester and nylon yarn types for development and testing. The resulting product was a cool-to-the-touch yarn suitable for a variety of apparel applications.
She contributed to the ideation process and served as the primary expert on the testing methodology ultimately used to validate the product claims. After nearly a year of sampling and rigorous testing, the team selected the final optimized yarn version.
Her role then extended beyond technical development. She presented relevant data to internal marketing and sales teams, helping them communicate the product’s benefits to fabric mills and apparel brands. This required translating highly technical concepts into an accessible, marketing-friendly story.
Alongside this project, she worked on dozens of technologies and products with fabric mills and brands, ranging from startups to globally recognized apparel companies. Whether identifying the optimal yarn type and fabric construction for a particular application or developing a testing methodology to quantify performance, each project offered an opportunity to expand her understanding of what is technically possible.
These experiences have prepared her for her current role, where she can better understand the steps each stakeholder must take to develop a market-ready product.
Building Alignment Through Collaboration
Developing textile innovations requires collaboration across research, manufacturing, sourcing, marketing, design, and business teams. Each function approaches an opportunity differently. Research considers technical possibilities, manufacturing evaluates scalability, sourcing examines cost and supply continuity, marketing considers the consumer benefit, and business teams assess overall value and return.
Katherine believes these perspectives are necessary to developing a successful product. Her approach begins with establishing a shared understanding of the problem before discussing potential solutions. When teams agree on why an innovation matters to the consumer or the business, conversations about how to achieve it become more productive.
She emphasizes listening to concerns rather than treating them as obstacles. A manufacturing partner may identify a process limitation, a sourcing team may recognize a supply-chain risk, or a technical team may question a marketing claim because the available testing does not support it. Each concern can help the team make a better-informed decision.
Her experience across the supply chain encourages her to consider the consequences of decisions beyond the immediate task. By asking what a decision means for the next person in the process, teams can identify potential issues before they become expensive or difficult to resolve.
Data also helps create a common language. Testing results, consumer insights, cost considerations, and manufacturability can move discussions away from personal preferences and toward objective evaluation. However, she recognizes that data does not always provide a straightforward answer. Experience and judgment remain important, particularly when people bring years of knowledge about materials, processes, suppliers, and customers.
For her, “Alignment does not mean everyone must share the same opinion. It means understanding the objective, respecting different areas of expertise, and committing to decisions once they have been made.”
Successful collaboration comes down to clarity, respect, and shared accountability. The objective is to bring together the right expertise, challenge assumptions, and deliver an innovation that is technically credible, commercially viable, manufacturable, and beneficial to the consumer.
Mentorship and the Next Generation of Women in STEM
Katherine sees mentorship and education as essential to the future of the textile and materials industry. Experienced professionals possess valuable knowledge about materials, manufacturing, supply chains, product development, and customer relationships. Much of this understanding comes from years of practical experience rather than textbooks or classrooms.
She believes those who have benefited from this knowledge have both a responsibility and an opportunity to pass it along. Sharing experience helps emerging professionals learn faster, avoid repeating mistakes, and build on what came before.
Having benefited from mentors throughout her career, she understands the value of perspective, particularly for people beginning their professional journeys. A mentor can help normalize the uncertainty that accompanies learning new skills and remind emerging professionals that confidence often develops through experience.
For women entering technical fields, this support can be particularly important. She believes the industry must create opportunities for women to see themselves as technical experts, innovators, decision-makers, and leaders. Sometimes the barrier is not a lack of capability, but a lack of confidence or someone who can help them recognize their potential.
Mentorship must therefore extend beyond teaching technical skills. It should help people develop critical thinking, ask meaningful questions, examine assumptions, evaluate competing information, and recognize when something does not make sense.
Rather than immediately providing answers, mentors can encourage young professionals to explain their recommendations, consider potential concerns, and make decisions independently. Being trusted with responsibility, having ideas taken seriously, and learning from decisions can help build lasting confidence.
Education provides the technical foundation, while practical experience helps students understand how that knowledge applies to real challenges. Katherine sees partnerships between education and industry as important for exposing students to research and development, manufacturing environments, sustainability challenges, and the people working across the sector.
She also wants people to recognize the breadth of opportunities within textiles. Beyond apparel, the industry includes interiors, automotive, aerospace, medical applications, personal protective equipment, composites, and advanced manufacturing.
For her, mentorship extends beyond individual career development. Experienced professionals must preserve institutional knowledge while giving the next generation the confidence and critical-thinking skills to determine what comes next. Strong mentor-mentee relationships also allow learning to move in both directions, with new perspectives challenging established ways of thinking.
Shaping a Collaborative and Responsible Future
Looking ahead, Katherine hopes to contribute to an industry culture that values people, encourages curiosity, shares knowledge, and recognizes that meaningful progress rarely results from one person working alone.
She believes the textile industry faces important challenges and opportunities involving new technologies and materials, environmental impact, changing supply chains, and workforce development. Rather than attempting to predict exactly what the industry will become, she wants to help create an environment where people are prepared to respond to change together.
Sustainability is an important part of this vision. Addressing environmental challenges requires consideration across the supply chain, from material selection and manufacturing processes to product design and consumption. She is particularly interested in circularity and more thoughtful material use, including opportunities to reconsider how fibers and yarns are sourced, how products are designed, how waste is managed, and how materials can remain useful for longer.
These efforts require cooperation among designers, manufacturers, fiber producers, researchers, educators, consumers, and government entities. She believes the industry also needs space to explore sustainability questions honestly, learn from approaches that do not work as expected, and recognize that meaningful change requires experimentation and collaboration.
Technology, in her view, is most valuable when it serves people rather than becoming an objective in itself. Innovation should help make work and finished products safer, more sustainable, and more useful while addressing problems that matter.
Education and workforce development will also remain important to her future contributions. She hopes to support learning environments that combine technical skills with the confidence to think critically, ask questions, and adapt. By communicating the breadth of the textile industry, she also hopes to encourage people from different backgrounds to find opportunities within the field.
Her understanding of leadership reflects these priorities. She does not see leadership primarily as authority or having the most answers, but as the responsibility to create conditions in which others can contribute and grow. Listening, making room for different perspectives, giving credit freely, and reconsidering one’s own thinking are all part of that responsibility.
Ultimately, she hopes to pursue opportunities at the intersections of people and technology, industry and education, and sustainability and practical implementation. She is particularly interested in collaborative efforts that build knowledge and relationships that remain valuable beyond an individual project.
For her, “A meaningful legacy is found not only in products developed or professional accomplishments, but also in the people influenced and the culture helped to create.” If a younger professional gains confidence through her encouragement, someone finds a path into the industry through mentorship, or an idea develops because people have been given space to share it, she considers those meaningful contributions.
As the textile industry continues to change, Katherine remains committed to curiosity, collaboration, and shared learning. Her journey across research and development, product integrity, and apparel innovation has shown her that better products emerge when technical knowledge is connected with practical understanding and consumer needs.
The perspective she hopes to continue bringing to the industry is rooted in connecting the dots: understanding where a material comes from, how it performs in a finished product, what can responsibly be claimed about it, and whether it creates something better for the person who ultimately buys and uses that product.
For Katherine, the future of textile innovation depends on stronger relationships, shared knowledge, and an industry where practical experience is respected and new ideas are welcomed. Contributing to that future, rather than leaving behind a story centered on individual achievement, is the legacy she hopes to build.
