It's remarkable that one of the best science fiction films ever made isn't one.  It's a comedy.  And it doesn't deal with robots or spaceships; it's about fashion. 

Or to be more precise, it's about cloth.  The Man in the White Suit (1951) chronicles the career of the enigmatic genius Sidney Stratton as he fights against the forces of conservatism and self-interest in his attempts to perfect a revolutionary new polymer textile that never wears out and never gets dirty.  In fact, it's so strong that a single thread is as strong as a ship's hawser and when it's woven into cloth the result can only be cut with an acetylene torch.  It's a revolution that will change the textile industry and perhaps the world, but both management and labour see it as merely a threat to their well being; one run of cloth and everyone's out of a job. Naturally, that makes Sidney a very unpopular man. 

The amazing thing about this is that everyone is so short-sighted that no one sees the larger possibilities of the material beyond clothing that would make everyone as rich as Croesus.  Think about what an unbreakable, unsoilable polymer would mean.  Never mind fashion.  It would have incredible surgical and medical applications.  It would be perfect for Kevlar-type protective fabric, as a plastic with all its applications,  as matting to rival fibreglass, a building material,  or aviation applications.  With a bit of imagination, it goes a bit further than just cutting down on the washing and mending. 

If it worked, the demand for something like this has no limit, but that assumes imagination isn't limited.

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