Polar fleece is a soft fabric made from polyester that is napped and insulating.
PolarFleece is a trademark registered by Malden Mills (now Polartec, LLC) with the United States Patent and Trademark Office on October 6, 1981. [1] Malden Mills developed polar fleece in 1979.
Polar fleece is used in jackets, hats, sweaters, sweatpants, cloth diapers (nappies), gym clothes, hoodies, pajamas, blankets, and high-performance outdoor clothing. The produced fleece can be used to create clothes that are very light, soft, and easy to wash. Polar fleece can stretch more easily in one direction than in others. [2]
Polar fleece originated in Massachusetts in 1979 when Malden Mills and Patagonia developed Synchilla (synthetic chinchilla). [3] It was a new, light, strong pile fabric meant to mimic, and in some ways surpass, wool. Malden Mills CEO Aaron Feuerstein intentionally declined to patent polar fleece, allowing the material to be produced cheaply and widely by many vendors, leading to the material's quick and wide acceptance. [4] [5] [6] Malden Mills registered PolarFleece as a trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office on October 6, 1981. [7]
A lightweight, warm and soft fabric, fleece has some of wool's good qualities. Polar fleece garments are traditionally available in the micro, 100, 200, and 300 variants, where the numbers represent the fleece's weight in grams per square meter (gsm). The heavier fleece are warmer.
Fleece can range from being high loft to tightly knit. High loft fleece is warmer because it traps tiny air pockets which holds body heat. [8] Traditionally, polar fleece always had a two-sided pile (i.e., they were fluffy on both sides), but now clothes are often advertised as polar fleece even if they lack a two-sided pile. [9] [10] High pile fleece (which have a higher loft), will eventually lose some loft by becoming matted over time. High pile fleece are also more prone to collecting dirt than low pile fleece.
Fleece can also be made out of recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles, or even recycled fleece.
To prevent high pile fleece from matting, they can be brushed regularly (which also removes dirt) and hung rather than folded. [11] To remove already existing matting, rinse it in cool water and while it is still damp, gently and unidirectionally brush the matting out (while optionally lightly spraying it with water), and then use a lint roller. [12] Fleece is machine washable and dries quickly.
Fleece readily generates static electricity, which causes the accumulation of lint, dust, and pet hair. It is also susceptible to damage from high temperature washing, tumble drying, or ironing under unusual conditions. Lower-quality polyester fleece material is also prone to pilling (i.e., the jacket's fabrics break and reform into tiny balls on the jacket).
It is hydrophobic, but it is not waterproof and can absorb water. When wet, it holds less than 1% of its weight in water, and depending on its weight takes 1–4 hours to dry (even on your body in cold temperatures). [13] [14] [15] Fleece loses most of its insulating quality when wet. [16] Regular polar fleece is not windproof. [17] [18]
Washing synthetic textiles like fleece releases microfibers, a type of microplastic. [19] The release of these microfibers into the wastewater is proportional to the microplastic pollution in soil, marine, and freshwater habitats. [20] Studies also show that tumble drying of polyester releases airborne microplastics. [21]
Velvet is a type of woven fabric with a dense, even pile that gives it a distinctive soft feel. Historically, velvet was typically made from silk. Today, velvet can be made from silk, linen, cotton, wool, synthetic fibers, silk-cotton blends, or synthetic-natural fiber blends.
Laundry is the washing of clothing and other textiles, and, more broadly, their drying and ironing as well. Laundry has been part of history since humans began to wear clothes, so the methods by which different cultures have dealt with this universal human need are of interest to several branches of scholarship.
Dry cleaning is any cleaning process for clothing and textiles using a solvent other than water. Clothes are instead soaked in a water-free liquid solvent. Perchloroethylene is the most commonly used solvent, although alternative solvents such as hydrocarbons, and supercritical CO2 are also used.
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Gabardine is a durable twill worsted wool. It is a tightly woven waterproof fabric and is used to make outerwear and various other garments, such as suits, overcoats, trousers, uniforms, and windbreakers. Thomas Burberry created the fabric in the late 1870s and patented it in 1888. The name gabardine comes from "gaberdine", a type of long, cape-like dress worn during the Middle Ages.
A modacrylic is a synthetic copolymer. Modacrylics are soft, strong, resilient and dimensionally stable. They can be easily dyed, show good press and shape retention, and are quick to dry. They have outstanding resistance to chemicals and solvents, are not attacked by moths or mildew, and are nonallergenic. Among their uses are in apparel linings, furlike outerwear, paint-roller covers, scatter rugs, carpets, and work clothing and as hair in wigs.
A bathrobe, also known as a housecoat or a dressing gown, is a loose-fitting outer garment worn by people, often after washing the body or around a pool. A bathrobe is considered to be very informal clothing, and is not worn with everyday clothes.
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Acrylic fibers are synthetic fibers made from a polymer (polyacrylonitrile) with an average molecular weight of ~100,000, about 1900 monomer units. For a fiber to be called "acrylic" in the US, the polymer must contain at least 85% acrylonitrile monomer. Typical comonomers are vinyl acetate or methyl acrylate. DuPont created the first acrylic fibers in 1941 and trademarked them under the name Orlon. It was first developed in the mid-1940s but was not produced in large quantities until the 1950s. Strong and warm, acrylic fiber is often used for sweaters and tracksuits and as linings for boots and gloves, as well as in furnishing fabrics and carpets. It is manufactured as a filament, then cut into short staple lengths similar to wool hairs, and spun into yarn.
Thinsulate is a brand of synthetic fiber thermal insulation used in clothing. The word is a portmanteau of the words thin and insulate, trademarked by 3M. The material is made by the 3M Corporation and was first sold in 1979. It was originally marketed as an inexpensive alternative to down; at the time, 3M claimed it was twice as warm as an equivalent amount of any natural material.
Aaron Mordechai Feuerstein was an American industrialist, philanthropist, and the third-generation owner and CEO of Malden Mills in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Some remember him as "the mensch who saved Christmas" when he publicly declared: "I am not throwing three thousand people out of work, two weeks before their holiday."
Malden Mills Industries is the original developer and manufacturer of Polartec polar fleece and manufactures other modern textiles. The company is located in Andover, Massachusetts and has operations in Hudson, New Hampshire.
The Extended Cold Weather Clothing System is a protective clothing system developed in the 1980s by the United States Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center, Natick, Massachusetts. The first generation ECWCS consisted of parka and trousers plus 20 other individual clothing, handwear, headwear and footwear items which are used in various combinations to meet the cold weather environmental requirements of the US military. The Extended Climate Warfighter Clothing System, or Gen III ECWCS, is designed to maintain adequate environmental protection in temperatures ranging between −60 and +40 °F.
PrimaLoft® is a brand of patented synthetic microfiber thermal insulation material that was developed for the United States Army in the 1980s. PrimaLoft is a registered trademark of PrimaLoft, Inc., the brand's parent company.
A dryer ball is a spherical laundry device for tumbling clothes dryers used as an alternative to fabric softener, reducing static electricity or softening clothing, or to accelerate the drying process.
Textile manufacturing is one of the oldest human activities. The oldest known textiles date back to about 5000 B.C. In order to make textiles, the first requirement is a source of fibre from which a yarn can be made, primarily by spinning. The yarn is processed by knitting or weaving to create cloth. The machine used for weaving is the loom. Cloth is finished by what are described as wet process to become fabric. The fabric may be dyed, printed or decorated by embroidering with coloured yarns.
PVC clothing is shiny clothing made from the plastic polyvinyl chloride (PVC). PVC plastic is often called "vinyl" and this type of clothing is commonly known as vinyl clothing. PVC is sometimes confused with the similarly shiny patent leather.
The fashion industry, particularly manufacture and use of apparel and footwear, is a significant driver of greenhouse gas emissions and plastic pollution. The rapid growth of fast fashion has led to around 80 billion items of clothing being consumed annually, with about 85% of clothes consumed in United States being sent to landfill.
Fabric treatments are processes that make fabric softer, or water resistant, or enhance dye penetration after they are woven. Fabric treatments get applied when the textile itself cannot add other properties. Treatments include, scrim, foam lamination, fabric protector or stain repellent, anti microbial and flame retardant.
Sherpa is a fabric with a pile on one side and flat on the other side.