Suitable fabric for lingerie

Suitable fabric for underwear

We decided to find the right fabric for lingerie with a more delicate look. Whereas all the men´s underwear is mainly made of cotton mixed with elastane, this blog would be almost the same as our blog about jeans. 

Style

The style for which we will find a fabric is this Balconette bra in lace and mesh with underwired, moulded cups that lift and shape which has detachable shoulder straps that can be fastened in several different ways. There is an corresponding string in lace and mesh with a lined gusset. 

Our research on affordable, but luxurious looking, lingerie showed that synthetic fibres mixed with elastane are most common in these styles. Though cotton is frequently combined in the bottoms, we will address two fabrics in this blog, with the emphasis on polyamide. The fabric we’ve chosen is made out of 87% of polyamide and 13% of elastane. For the crotch lining in the bottom we´ve chosen 100% cotton. 

History of Polyamide

In 1939 there came a substitute for the expensive silk fabric. It was the first man-made fibre called Nylon. This name is the brand name, the scientific name for Nylon is Polyamide. Wallace Carothers was working for the DuPont Company when he invented Polyamide. 

Technical construction 

Polyamide

Polyamide is a synthetic fibre. The easy explanation of how polyamide yarn is made is that polyamide solid chips are melted into a liquid form. This liquid polyamide will run through spinnerets, which look like big showerheads. The polyamide comes out of the holes as a long filament. The filaments are cooled in a cold air system and can be turned into yarn by using multiple filaments. There are two different types of raw materials for polyamide, namely Nylon 6 and Nylon 6.6. The difference is in the composition of the molecules. Nylon 6 has six carbons in the repeating unit and Nylon 6.6 has two sets of six carbons. The composition of the fabric that is chosen does not tell which type of Nylon is used. 

Elastane 

The polyamide is mixed with elastan, respectively 87% and 13%. Elastane is a synthetic polymer filament and has a structure of hard and soft segments. The hard segments give strength and coherence to the filament and the soft segments give elasticity because they are highly extensible. The elastane is probably folded into the textured polyamide filament. There are several reasons for blending fibres/filaments;

 

· The blend gives quality improbementd in performance in use, clothing comfort or 

aftercare performance;

· The blend gives a better appearance, i.e. optical effects;

·The blend provides better production costs.

There are two stages in the production process where fibres/filaments can be blended, namely during the staple yarn production, by blending different types of fibres/filaments, or during the fabric production, by mixing yarns made of different fibres or filaments.

Our fabric is probably blended during the staple yarn production, where the elastane is covered by the polyamide. 

Cotton

The crotch lining is made out of 100% cotton. The production of cotton is briefly described in our blog about a suitable fabric for men’s jeans. 

Fabric construction

The lace material is probably yarn dyed with a water insoluble dye stuff in the disperse class. It is definitely not printed, whereas all the filaments are evenly colored. The dyestuff diffuses into the filament at a high temperature which gives good fastness properties. This is also shown in the color fastness tests and is needed, whereas lingerie is frequently washed at a higher temperature. 

There are two types of knitted fabric; weft knitted and warp knitted. Our fabric is a warp knitted fabric of multi-flat-filaments. The fabric has several types of knit construction and we think most of it is made as a Rachel lace on a warp knitting machine with latch needles. The fabric is argued to be the raschel lace, because it is not a bobbin lace, whereas the pattern is not formed by twisted yarns, and it is not an embroidery lace, whereas the pattern has not the specific embroidery look and the lace has not cut out openings. The raschel lace is made on a base of net fabric with a patterns formed from inlay yarns. There is one thicker yarn added to give relief, this yarn is s-twisted. When you take this thicker yarn out of the knit, the knit stays structured. This also proves that the knit can be a raschel knit with a base net. There is not twist in the yarns that are used for the base knit. Besides the raschel knit, there is also a Gauze weave fabric added. This is mainly used at the back side of lingerie. 

The cotton is may be yarn dyed or fabric dyed. All the yarns are colored evenly and there are no white spots, which assume that it is yarn dyed, but the fabric can also be fabric dyed. It is definitely not printed. It is probably dyed with a dyestuff of the reactive class, which forms a chemical link with the fibre and has very good fastness properties. The color fastness of the cotton is also tested and the results will be discussed later. The color fastness is needed to not notice a difference in color between the crotch lining and the lace after washing.

The cotton is produced in a plain single jersey knit, whereas the face side has the v shaped face loops and the back has the purl appearance. There are 12/13 wales and 19/20 courses per cm of fabric, which means that the fabric is knitted very fine with 12/13 needles per cm. 

Testing

The strength of the fabric is tested with the bursting machine Trubust in the laboratorium at TEKO, using the EN ISO 13938-1 standard. The video shows the test. You can see that the fabric bursts at 144 Kilopascal (KPa). There was 71.6 mm and 3 seconds needed to burst the fabric. 144 KPa is equal to a force of 20,89 pounds per square inch. We couldn’t find references giving an indication of the strength, but we think this is quite a strong fabric.   

The color fastness of the fabric is tested two times. Firstly the fabric is washed using the ISO 105-C06 standard. The fabric is washed on program A1M, meaning 45 minutes on 40 degree with a detergent and 10 metal balls. Both the lace fabric and the cotton fabric are tested. The results of the test are shown at the pictures and are fairly the same for both fabrics. There is no change in color and the other fabrics haven’t adopted the color. The left water that is colored pink a bit is from the polyamide washing test, the other water is from the cotton washing test.

The color fastness is also tested by rubbing the fabric with a wet cotton pad. The ISO 105 X12/X16 standard is applicable for this test. The results are shown in the picture again. The cotton didn’t adopt any color, there is no change, which means that grade 5 is applicable. Both tests conclude that the color fastness is really good, for both the lace and the cotton fabric.

We tested the abrasion resistance using the Martindale machine with the ISO 129452 standard. We performed 4 tests, rubbing the fabric 125, 500, 1000 and 2000 times. The results are shown in the picture and also this time there is no change seen on the fabric (grade 5). Whereas lingerie is warn under the clothes the abrasion resistance is quite important. The test shows that the fabric is really abrasion resistance, which indicates that the fabric will not pill easily while wearing. 

The weight of the lace fabric is 81,9 grams per square meter, which is converted to 3,45 ounces per square yard.

Properties

A knitted fabric with a composition of 80 percent nylon and 20 percent elastane has a high stretch factor which makes the fabric ideal for styles that require a skin-thight fit. The feel to the skin is very comfortable, since polyamide is a very soft fibre. Polyamide absorbs only around 4% of water. That is probably the reason why the crotch lining is made out of cotton. Cotton lining is also even more comfortable on the skin.

Polyamide has a really low thermal insulation, which is not applicable to this type of lingerie, for lingerie is no functional underwear.

Polyamide is really strong, it is even used in bulletproof vests. A lace fabric is really thin, but it still needs to hold up woman´s breast and polyamide is strong enough not to break under these forces. When the fabric is wet it is even 80 to 90% stronger! We tried to cut a a piece to weigh the fabric, but the fabric was so strong that we couldn't use the tools to cut out the fabric and needed to get siccors.

As we’ve seen in the test and also the book, clothing technologies, explains that polyamide is very abrasion resistance. This is quite important for underwear, because you wear under trousers like jeans, which rub against the underwear. Therefore the lingerie will look good after you wear it long time, since there will be no pills.

Care instruction

The fabric can be easily washed on 40 degrees, but it cannot resist tumble dry or ironing, because polyamide is sensitive to dry heat. Polyamide is drying very fast, therefore tumble drying is not important. Polyamide does not wrinkle, so the lingerie will always look good after washing. Furthermore polyamide does not shrink, so there are no problems with washing.

References:

Fabric for Fashion The swatch book

Clothing technology book