Why Lululemon Fabric Chooses Nylon Spandex Fabric Instead of Polyester? Why Nylon Can Deliver Buttery Soft Hand Feel | Lululemon Fabric Reveal
The core popularity of Lululemon yoga wear lies in its skin friendly wearing experience. Especially yoga leggings, the fabric feels buttery like soft and delicate, or smooth and cool. It is soft and comfortable to wear, fits the body shape, and has no tight feeling during large stretching movements.
Many people may wonder: both are synthetic elastic knitted fabrics, why does Lululemon mainly use Nylon Spandex fabric instead of Lower Cost Polyester Spandex fabric? The fundamental reason is that nylon and polyester have completely different underlying molecular structures, which directly determine the basic hand feel, touch and wear resistance of the fabric.
1. From the perspective of nylon molecules, why nylon fabric has better hand feel than polyester fabric under the same treatment
Nylon, also known as polyamide, chemical name polyamide. The smooth touch we can feel comes from its molecular structure. The molecular chain of nylon is connected section by section in neat order, it is a smooth polymer long chain, like a long string of polished smooth beads. Although there is hydrogen bond attraction between adjacent nylon polymer chains, the hydrogen bond can open and close again under force.
Here is an easy to understand metaphor: two adjacent nylon long molecular chains are like two bead strings with weak magnetic attraction. There is attraction between the two bead strings, but this attraction can be opened after being forced just like magnets. Besides, the surface of bead strings is smooth and can slide slightly with low friction resistance.
But polyester molecules are totally different. Polyester long molecular chains contain rigid benzene rings, with uneven surface. The benzene rings are like “gear teeth”, embedding into each other. Therefore, adjacent polyester long molecular chains are easy to be stuck by these “gears”, and the molecules cannot slide past each other.
If the above description still cannot help you understand instantly, think of an example in daily life. If two bracelets are made of beads with smooth surface and no obvious irregular shapes, they will not tangle easily, and can slide smoothly against each other. But if two bracelets are made of irregular beads, once they are placed together, the irregular beads will block each other and it is hard to separate them with smooth movement.
The shape of molecular chain decides the surface texture of the final filament. When fabric touches our skin, essentially, it is the friction between skin and countless fabric filaments. Nylon molecular chains are regular and smooth. After spinning, the outer surface of filaments is smooth with low friction coefficient. When skin slides across it, the resistance is small, so it has an inherent warm and smooth base. Polyester molecules have strong rigidity, the fiber surface has many uneven spots, bringing a dragging and astringent feeling during friction.
2. From the perspective of yarn used, why Lululemon fabric can provide buttery soft hand feel
To figure this out, you need to learn several basic textile professional concepts first.
First, understand what filament is. Filament is the smallest independent unit of textile fiber. How thin are the filaments used in high end yoga fabrics like Lululemon? The diameter of an ordinary human hair is about 80~100 microns. High end yoga fabrics usually adopt 40D/34F nylon, the filament diameter is only about 10 microns, much thinner than human hair.
Second, understand yarn and denier. Yarn is a continuous bundle formed by bundling many independent filaments together, which can be pulled and woven by knitting machines. D, denier, is the unit to describe the total thickness of a yarn bundle. The larger the D value, the thicker the whole yarn bundle. F, filament count, means how many independent filaments are bundled inside one yarn.
High end yoga wear usually uses 40D/34F yarn. What does this mean? Here is an example.
40D/5F: One yarn is split into 5 thick filaments. Thick filaments have strong rigidity and are hard to bend. Fabric knitted with this yarn has prominent texture on surface, strong reflection, firm and hard hand feel, commonly used for ordinary sports fabrics.
40D/34F (special for high end yoga fabric): Under the same total thickness of yarn, it is split into 34 ultra fine filaments.
When your fingers slide over the fabric surface, you touch not a few thick hard filaments, but dozens of ultra fine filaments fitting skin at the same time. Countless fine filaments bring dense and soft touch. When light falls on the fabric surface, it scatters repeatedly among massive ultra fine filaments, avoiding sharp mirror reflection, creating the matte soft fog effect pursued by high end yoga leggings.
Besides the filament thickness of yarn, the cross section of yarn also needs to be focused on.
The 3D shape of yarn can be regarded as a prism. The shape of cross section directly affects the outer shape of yarn and the fabric touch.
Even if D and F of a yarn are exactly the same, different filament cross sections will lead to completely different fabric hand feel, luster and air permeability.
Round cross section nylon: cross section is perfectly round, the outer surface of fiber is continuously round. It has even contact area with skin and good thermal conductivity, brings smooth touch, used for cool smooth surface yoga fabric.
Cross shaped / multi lobed modified cross section nylon: cross section looks like cross petals, with tiny micro grooves on the outer wall of fiber. The grooves scatter light for stronger softer foggy matte finish; meanwhile, the grooves improve fabric air permeability.
3. Brushing Treatment
The molecules and yarn of fabric decide the base quality of fabric. Brushing treatment is the key process to create buttery soft hand feel.
Brushing treatment uses fine sand rollers to gently brush the fabric surface, generating a layer of very short and fine fuzz on the fiber surface without damaging the yarn.
This layer of fine fuzz is one of the reasons for the buttery soft touch. With softening agent added, the fabric feels smooth without greasy feeling, and it is comfortable when sticking to skin while sweating.
4. How to select yoga fabric with similar texture to Lululemon
If you want to replicate the texture of high end yoga leggings, the first step is to confirm the specification of nylon yarn, then match knitting and finishing processes:
- Creamy soft brushed fabric: Recommend 40D/34F, 70D/68F high F ultra fine denier nylon mixed with a small amount of spandex, light brushing. Ultra fine filaments are easy to bend, with strong creamy feeling after brushing, the mainstream solution for high end yoga leggings.
- Smooth cool surface fabric: Fine denier round cross section semi dull nylon, no brushing. Smooth fabric surface, brings inherent cool touch when contacting skin, suitable for high intensity fitness and running apparel.
- Double knit fabric: Medium denier high F nylon, double structure knitting. Thick and stable fabric body, strong wrapping and supporting power, suitable for high waist high support yoga leggings.
5. Our Natudon Nylon Spandex Yoga Fabric
We supply various nylon spandex sport knitted fabrics with customizable yarn specifications:
high F ultra fine denier nylon brushed fabric, fine denier round nylon cool smooth surface fabric, medium denier nylon double knit fabric.
No matter creamy soft yoga legging fabric or smooth cool high elastic sport fabric, we have strong customization capability.
We can accurately match nylon denier D, filament count F, fiber cross section, dullness level according to your product positioning, and adjust gram weight, knitting structure, brushing and other finishing processes.