Lycra

Lycra, a trademark of Invista, is an elastic fiber known for its remarkable elasticity, capable of stretching up to 4-6 times its original length and returning to its initial state. Typically blended with other yarns in small quantities ranging from 3-20%, Lycra maintains its properties while imparting stretch, flexibility, and drape to garments. Clothing containing Lycra offers comfort, exceptional recovery, and ease of care, as the fabric retains its shape and resists stretching or wrinkling. Lycra-infused sportswear provides unrestricted movement and maintains its shape even after intense activity or washing, offering durability for long-lasting wear.

 Coolmax

Developed by DuPont, Coolmax is a polyester-based fiber designed with a unique four-channel structure that rapidly absorbs sweat and allows it to evaporate, keeping the wearer feeling dry and comfortable. Unlike regular fibers, Coolmax has a surface area that is over 20% wider and features spacious gaps between fibers, allowing for enhanced breathability. This innovative four-channel structure efficiently absorbs and evaporates sweat, maintaining a fresh and dry sensation. Coolmax facilitates quick moisture evaporation, ensuring the wearer stays dry and comfortable at all times.

 Tactel

Tactel is a premium material developed by DuPont, the pioneer behind the invention and enhancement of nylon. It is crafted from DuPont's finest nylon 66 fabric, designed to be suitable for a wide range of products including stockings, lingerie, fashion wear, casual wear, and sportswear. Utilizing polyester, Tactel exhibits superior heat resistance compared to conventional nylon, offering a soft touch and exceptional durability. Its antimicrobial properties provide a comfortable feel, earning it the nickname "silk from the oil" due to its luxurious sensation. Additionally, Tactel is machine washable, ensuring easy maintenance. With its unique structure that enhances comfort and breathability while effectively moving moisture away from the skin, Tactel fabric delivers the ultimate level of comfort for enjoying sports and leisure activities.

 Mediplex

MEDIPLEX is a fabric designed to provide comfortable wear even during high-sweat sports activities by incorporating a peachskin process during manufacturing to prevent the fabric from sticking to the skin. It boasts excellent elasticity, offering a smooth and flattering fit that gently hugs the body's contours. Despite its soft touch and lightweight feel, it maintains outstanding durability. With superior shape retention, it is easy to store and is optimized for various sports activities.

 Creora

Creora, developed by Hyosung in 1992, is a type of high-elasticity fiber similar to spandex that aids in body shaping. It is widely used in materials such as swimwear, lingerie, and stockings due to its excellent color retention and durability after dyeing. Its soft elasticity prevents red marks on the waist and hips, and it is resistant to chlorine with excellent water repellency, ensuring that the fabric maintains its texture even after multiple wears. The name "Creora" combines "Creative" and "Ora," signifying the best spandex fiber that opens up a creative world in the 21st century. Particularly, "Ora" means "Gold" in Europe.

 ATY

ATY stands for Air (Jet) Textured Yarn, which is produced through the interlacing process using compressed air. As the air is pushed diagonally on both sides, the yarn is pushed out by force, forming loops. When this part is woven into fabric, it gives a soft feel to the hand.

 Taslan

Taslan is a fabric made from a special processing of nylon developed by DuPont. It possesses waterproof and windproof capabilities and is extremely thin due to its high-density construction. Think of it as a windbreaker jacket.
Features:
Waterproof and windproof.
Used for windbreaker jackets, winter padding outer layers, rainwear.
Taslan is commonly used for outdoor activities such as hiking jackets and as fabric for raincoats. It's the most commonly encountered nylon fabric. Developed by DuPont, Taslan eliminates the drawbacks of regular nylon taffeta, such as a shiny appearance, giving it a soft and natural feel similar to cotton fibers. Consequently, it offers a luxurious feel and soft texture compared to taffeta.

 Teflon

Teflon forms an invisible protective barrier that helps repel water and other contaminants, ensuring freshness and maintaining the fabric's original elegance and comfort regardless of the weather. It envelops each fiber, preserving the fabric's natural breathability. Even after machine washing or dry cleaning, its effectiveness is retained. High-performance fluororesin Teflon, owing to its unique molecular structure, possesses characteristics such as heat resistance, chemical inertness, excellent electrical properties, and non-stickiness. Through water and oil repellent processing, it significantly reduces the penetration of liquids. Additionally, with anti-stain processing, it reduces the number of washes required, ensuring longevity and maintaining a fresh appearance for an extended period.

 Polatec Power Stretch

Polartec Power Stretch is gaining recognition for its recent popularity, boasting high stretchability in all four directions while harnessing the breathability characteristic of Polartec fabrics. This product features a unique construction with a four-way stretch material that conforms closely to the body, comprising outer and inner layers made of different fabrics. The durable nylon outer layer resists wind and abrasion, while the soft polyester velour inner layer provides warmth and comfortable wear. Additionally, its rapid moisture absorption capability ensures constant dryness and comfort. The combination of a wind-resistant nylon outer layer and a soft, warm polyester velour inner layer enhances mobility, making it ideal for use as a base layer fabric due to its lightweight and compact nature. The densely woven outer fabric provides some degree of windproofing and is resilient to abrasion, allowing for machine washing.

 Thermolite

One of DuPont's functional fiber series, this material is a lightweight, quick-drying, and insulating fabric. Embedded with air pockets, it helps regulate body temperature even in extreme conditions, ensuring comfortable outdoor activities. Primarily used for winter insulation, it possesses warmth unlike Coolmax. Inspired by the hollow core structure of polar bear fur for effective air trapping, each fiber provides permanent insulation. With drying speeds 20% faster than regular insulating materials and over 50% faster than cotton, it offers enhanced comfort and lightweight feel, satisfying both insulation and moisture-wicking needs for various sports activities such as hiking and jogging.

This advanced laminated treatment on woven fabric involves a unique dotting process inside the fabric, providing a comfortable sensation unlike regular materials. It eliminates the need for separate linings. With a variety of fabric types and a smooth surface, it is utilized not only for heavy garments but also for sports warm-up gear, windbreakers, and training wear. Despite possessing moisture-wicking, waterproof, and water-repellent functions, it is more than 50% lighter on average than coated materials with conventional mesh linings. The distinctive dotted texture on the inner surface maintains comfort by keeping the body in a pleasant state during wear.

 MIPAN aqua-fresh

This premium sports apparel, made with Aqua yarn, boasts exceptional elasticity. The tops are meticulously crafted without sewing lines, emphasizing body lines ergonomically. Aqua Fresh utilizes Hyosung's proprietary yarn cross-section control technology to transform the yarn cross-section into a "?形王子" shape, allowing free movement of moisture due to capillary action. It absorbs and releases sweat more than 70% faster than natural fibers. It finds versatile applications in professional sportswear, leisurewear, casual clothing, and underwear. The absence of side seams ensures comfort during exercise.

 Fleece

Malden's Polartec fleece fabric, along with Gore-Tex, revolutionized outdoor clothing, particularly for hiking. Polartec fleece, which produces soft fibers on polyester fabric, offers excellent stretch, lightweight warmth, quick-drying properties, and maintains a comfortable feel even when wet, without compromising insulation significantly. Its weakness lies in susceptibility to wind, but this can be mitigated with outer layers. (Recently, there are Wind Stoppers and similar products that feature a waterproof/breathable resin coating between two layers of fleece fabric to address this issue.)

 Neoprene

Neoprene, a synthetic rubber, was invented by Wallace Carothers of DuPont in 1931, before the invention of nylon, which is a primary material in stockings and underwear. Initially marketed under the name Duprene, it was later renamed Neoprene. The reason neoprene is used in wetsuits is because it resembles sponge-like material with air pockets, providing excellent insulation. There are two types of diving suits: dry suits and wet suits. Wet suits, especially, utilize the layer of water trapped between the suit and the body along with the air layer within the neoprene fabric, which gets warmed by body heat, allowing divers to stay comfortable even in deep waters.

DTY (Draw Textured Yarn) - It is a processing method that imparts crimpability by simultaneously conducting false twist crimping during drawing and texturing.

DTY (Draw Textured Yarn) - It is a processing method that imparts crimpability by simultaneously conducting false twist crimping during drawing and texturing.

 Cotna

"Cotna" is the name of a functional yarn produced by Hyosung. The fabric made from this yarn is called "Cotna fabric." Cotna fabric is composed of polyester but has a cotton-like feel. It combines the advantages of cotton and polyester while addressing their disadvantages. It is a fabric that incorporates both the moisture-absorbing and quick-drying properties of cotton and the durability of polyester. It is made by weaving fibers resistant to moisture absorption and utilizes 40D spandex.

 knit-Daimaru

"Daimaru" is a term used to refer to all knitted fabrics except for circular knits. The name originates from the Japanese words "dai," meaning large or big, and "maru," meaning round or circular, indicating the large circular shape of the knitting machine used for these fabrics. Fabrics produced using these machines are also called "Daimaru fabrics."

Types of Daimaru fabrics include:

20's: Thickness suitable for spring and fall.
30~40's: Thickness suitable for spring to summer (the higher the number, the thinner the fabric).
Single: The basic fabric of Daimaru, commonly used for T-shirts. It has horizontal stretchability, with one side being the face side, and minimal spandex content.
Single spandex: Single fabric with added spandex for increased stretchability, often used for leggings.
Fleece: Similar to single fabric but with higher horizontal stretchability, commonly used for tight-fitting T-shirts.
Peach fleece: Fabric with fleece and thickness, good stretchability, often used for winter leggings or sweatpants.
Two-sided/special two-sided: Fabric with the same texture on both sides, commonly used for fall and winter sweatshirts, hoodies, and jackets.
Terry: Fabric with different textures on the front and back, with the back resembling a towel. Thicker than two-sided fabric, often used for sweatshirts, hoodies, and jackets.
Ponte: Fabric with a medium feel between Daimaru and woven fabric. It has high density and moderate stretchability, commonly used for student gym uniforms and women's jackets.
Quilting wadding: Daimaru fabric treated with diamond-shaped quilting. Often used for winter clothing or jacket linings.
Rib: Fabric with distinctive ribbed texture, high stretchability, and commonly used for neckbands, cuffs, and hems, as well as beanies.

 Tricot

"Tricot" is a representative warp-knit fabric (tricot fabric) in the field of warp knitting. This term, derived from French, refers to warp knitting fabric and simultaneously to the knitting machine (tricot knitting machine). In French pronunciation, it is pronounced as 'tree-ko', but in English, it is spelled as 'tricot'. The knitting method for tricot involves two techniques: tricot knitting involves creating stitches sideways (similar to hand knitting) and connecting them lengthwise, and raschel knitting involves creating stitches lengthwise by interconnecting adjacent stitches using the same or more needles than the number of stitches in the width direction.

Tricot fabric is known for its stability even in thin forms, as it does not lose stitches. It offers some horizontal elasticity, good moisture absorption and breathability due to its porous structure, softness, resistance to wrinkles, and prevention of fraying at the edges. Tricot fabrics come in various colors, and the surface side may be technically considered the reverse side, depending on the design, with dyeing possible on both sides. Tricot fabrics range from heavy to very light and are used in various applications such as underwear, pajamas, wedding dresses, innerwear, linings, dresses, and upholstery.

The fundamental fabric for all textiles, woven by a loom (a machine that weaves fabric), is called a plain weave, also known as a basic weave. Depending on how it is woven, it is divided into three types: plain weave, twill weave, and satin weave. The warp (lengthwise) and weft (crosswise) yarns cross each other to create the fabric, which does not stretch much.

Types of Fabrics (Most commonly used woven fabrics): Polyester, Nylon, Cotton, Rayon

 Art silk/Rayon

The term "Rayon" comes from the French word "rayonne," meaning "like silk." Fabric made from thread extracted from the mulberry tree is called silk. In the pursuit of developing a fiber with the feel of silk but sourced from readily available materials, Rayon, made from pulp extracted from trees, was invented by Courtaulds Fiber Inc. in the United Kingdom in 1904. The main raw material is pulp refined from coniferous or deciduous trees such as pine, birch, and spruce, primarily produced in the Northern Hemisphere.

As the cellulose component of the trees remains intact, Rayon is considered an environmentally friendly fiber compared to other fibers requiring more chemical processing. It is beneficial for individuals with sensitive skin or atopic conditions. The cellulose content of Rayon, at 12% absorption capacity, prevents static electricity and allows for quick moisture absorption and repellency, providing a refreshing sensation. It offers a soft texture similar to silk with a strong metallic luster. Additionally, Rayon is more affordable than other natural fibers like linen or cotton, making it economically viable for various clothing applications, especially in summer garments.

 Cotton

It has good moisture absorption and ventilation, with high moisture content. It also has high heat resistance and excellent dyeability, but lacks elasticity, making it prone to wrinkles.

It comes in twill weave (with the front surface having a diagonal pattern) in various thread counts such as 10s, 15s, 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s.

For spring: 20s and 40s/2 with a slight nap (referred to as peach skin, similar to the surface of a peach). For winter: brushed finish on 10s or 15s. For summer: 30s, 40s, and 50s, with slight variations in thickness depending on the item. This twill weave is a basic weave and can be applied to all fabrics.

Plain weave (also known as plain or tabby weave) comes in thread counts of 10s, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 100s, and so on. The higher the thread count, the higher the price and perceived quality.