wear the same socks for centuries until the fabric decays.

That's some incredibly durable socks. Regular ones that we meat creatures wear often have lifespan less than a year.

I mean, if you can turn plastic gloves into grape fanta IRL this 'art' as per chemistry still makes quite some sense.
Cotton is comprised of fiber, which is by chemical definition is just long chain cellulose which can be cut into sugar; in fact, there's actually already a startup company with same recycling concept.