For wicking I like some good, old-fashioned Under Armor. It's designed to wick for athletes and just plain works.
"Old-fashioned"?
Gee, it's easily, what? - nine years old.
Lord but you make me feel old!
This is the Wilderness and Survival Skills Forum and I agree that we dwell too much on knives. But that's me.
Abrasion
Tested vs man-made fabrics such as polyester and nylon, or natural fibers such as manilla and hemp, both cotton and wool have relatively poor arbrasion resistance (and tensile strength). Therefore, no wool or cotton ropes for anything serious. Make a fabric of cotton or wool really thick and really dense and it takes longer to wear through (Think of the heels of rag wool socks. But they still wear through. Hence the addition of nylon to many "wool" socks.) A nylon garment made as thick as Filson would last for centuries.
Waterproof-Breathable
The tiny holes in water-proof breathable fabrics freeze shut in severe cold.
And the holes amount to a tiny % of the total surface at best so they don't breath well compared to non-waterproof fabrics.
The best waterproof breathable fabric in lab tests for the U.S. military (
http://www.verber.com/mark/outdoors/gear/breathability.pdf ) was eVent (by BHA). Gore has done it's level best to keep eVent out of the U.S. market by offering companies like Lowe monster discounts to drop eVent. Since the average customer thinks Gore is the be all and end all (See "advertising.") and because manufacturers naturally care only about $$, the strategy has worked. There are no major U.S. makers of eVent garments. In Europe, eVent is easier to find and less costly.
Entrant GII XT was second-best.
The lines tend to come together on the charts because Gore-Tex and its ilk breath faster when you're soaking wet under the Gore garment.
There was a fabric with a higher breathability in the lab tests, but that's plain expanded teflon and it leaks when sweat gets on it. It's included as a standard to which to compare the other, actually useful fabrics. (That deficiency explains why Gore-Tex fabrics do not use teflon as the water-proof barrier. They use expanded polyurethane.)
Soft Shells
What was called a "windbreaker" before Gore showed up is now a "soft shell" -water
repellant and wind resistent.
In the same series of lab tests for the military mentioned above, Schoeller Dry Skin Extreme was the best "soft shell" material. I have used in under a poncho with good results. It keeps the condensation that forms inside the poncho at bay. On it's own, it stops moderate rain for about two hours. It's pretty expensive so I got mine from Sierra Traders at a big discount from MSRP.
The military opted for another "soft shell" fabric shown on the linked test results, Nextec. It's an American product and it's more suited to military field conditions (no need to apply/renew "durable" water-repellant to exterior since it's made of silicon coated thread).
Insulation layers
Just an observation to add. Vendors are pushing polyester fill, quilted insulation garments (sorta look like down-filled). They seem fine as an outher garment, but when used under other layers, the weight of the outer layer(s) tends to force the air (insulation) out of the poly-filled garments.
The military (which, wonder of wonders, has actually hired industry professionals to run their garment-selection program) has opted to use polyester fleece for inside insulation layers and a polyester-filled "loft" layer for the ultimate outer layer for severe cold.
And yes, they use wicking layers next to the skin summer
and winter.
Stink
The first man-made wicking layer to hit it big was polypropylene. It had an unpleasant property of picking up "stink" no matter how often or well you washed it. That, plus a tendency to melt if put in a clother dryer on "hot," caused it to pretty much disappear when wicking polyester appeared on the market. Polyester fabrics are no more inclined to retain odors after washing than cotton or wool.
