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Stretch-Woven Fabric

STRETCH WOVEN FABRIC

Nothing since the invention of elastane has been as significant for swimwear as stretch-woven fabric. The reason you can't find this remarkable fabric in stores, is that mass produced brands have to factor in waste. This limits them to cheaper, mass-market, knit jersey.

As it says in the name, stretch woven fabric does not have a knit structure. It has interwoven straight fibres, as straight as those in your bed sheets. It stretches, because each fibre stretches. Each fibre is literally a strand of elastane, but you would never know, because each of those elastane strands-thousands of them-have sheaths of woolly nylon around them. 

Stretch-woven fabric exerts much greater tension. The elastane in conventional stretch-knit fabric does not go to work until the to be stretched nearly all of the way, to straighten the elastane, before that elastane is put to real work. But the elastane fibres in stretch-woven fabric, are straight to begin with. They're working on your body, just by touching your skin. A stretch-woven swimsuit is hard to get into, but that effort will be forgotten when you see how you look! 

The elastane in stretch-woven fabric lasts longer. That is because the sheath of nylon surrounding each strand of elastane, protects it from any abrasion. 

Stretch wovens are faster drying, because they don't have the depth of knit structures. Water trapped within the depth of knit garments is what makes them heavy when wet and much slower to dry. You lose that weight, and wait, with stretch-wovens. 

The French mill that supplies me, serves haute couture houses in Paris. It is only thanks to our long-term relationship, and their admiration of my work, that they reserve small lengths of some millings for Pride. You would otherwise never see such an array of checks, ribs, seersuckers, metallics, velvet finishes and the likes, not printed on, but integral to a high-performance stretch-weave.