Abstract: In recent years, solar-driven interface water evaporation technology has flourished in the fields of industrial wastewater treatment and seawater desalination because it conforms to the national “carbon peak and carbon neutrality” strategy. The technology through the development of porous water supply layer and light absorption layer assembled from the interface evaporator materials, solar energy into thermal energy and the heat is located in the gas-liquid interface to be used directly for the evaporation of water vaporization, thus realizing efficient wastewater desalination and purification of pure water by condensation recovery. Among them, the photothermal fabric-based interface evaporator is a new type of water treatment device with porous flexible fabric as the main material and nano-photothermal materials as the loading layer. This paper introduced its emerging design concepts and water treatment application progress, explored the role of carbon-based, metal-based, organic and oxide-based photothermal coating materials and other mechanisms. And the method of constructing interface evaporator based on two major categories of fabric materials, namely, natural fiber and chemical fiber, was introduced, and the influence of multi-dimensional structures, such as plane and three-dimensional, on the photothermal conversion efficiency of interface evaporator was analyzed. As well as the unique advantages of fabric-based interfacial evaporators in dealing with extreme environments such as high salt, high pollution, low temperature and strong wind. The key roles of the synergistic optimization strategy of material structure and configuration in photothermal conversion, water transmission, salt resistance and anti-fouling performance were summarized, and the advantages and future development challenges of photothermal fabric-based interfacial evaporators in practical application environments were proposed.