Due to laws prohibiting who was allowed to wear what, and the cost of materials, there was a vast difference in attire between the classes. Not only did materials vary, but styles as well, as the lower classes opted for practicality in their clothing by necessity. Lower classes, such as laborers and apprentices would wear linen, a light, cool fabric derived from the flax plant, wool, or sheepskin. Cotton had been in production since antiquity, but its import and manufacture was prohibited in Elizabethan England in order to protect the wool industry, one of England's chief exports. It was not until cotton farming in the new world and Eli Whitney's development of the cotton gin in 1793 that cotton become a favored fabric (Cotton).