Functionalgarments 180620090635

FUNCTIONAL GARMENTS
• Flu season for many, means rushing for vitamins and vaccinations.
Olivia Ong’s "Glitterati" [1] clothing line, offers, casually stylish dresses
and jackets that can protect the wearer from these health threats.
• This is an apt example of functional clothing when fashion does
something more than just making the wearer look good.
• Functional garments are basically garments that can perform
multiple functions, more than just their aesthetics and basic
protection of the wearer.
• These belong to the application area of technical textiles and are
specifically designed/ engineered to deliver functionality or
performance to the wearer, beyond the fundamental garment
functions.
Types of Functional Garments
According to Techtextil[2], functional garments can be broadly classified

into four groups, based on their areas of functionality:
1. Protective clothing:
– This includes functional garments that can provide the wearer
protection from one or more hazards.
– These can include protection against mechanical impact, physical
injury (cuts, bites, perforation, and abrasion), drowning,
heat/fire, extreme cold, rain, electric shock, radiation, invisibility
and dangerous substances and infective agents.
2. Sports-functional clothing:
– Functional garments in this section are used to enhance the
functionality of Sportsperson by providing a high level of
breathability, moisture/vapor transfer, heat insulation,
windproofing, waterproofing, and/or UV protection
depending upon the sport and environment requirements.
3. Medical-functional clothing:
– This section includes functionalities like absorbency, air
permeability, and durability based on the wearer and
requirements.
– It includes functional garments used for healthcare or
hygiene, surgical clothing, therapeutic clothing and intelligent
functional clothing.
4. Clothing for special needs:
– These functional garments are used to improve the quality
or ease of life for people with disabilities or special needs,
like wheelchair users, paraplegics, arthritis sufferers, people
with restricted movement, or stroke victims.
– These garments are mostly made to measure to ensure
individual need fulfillment and comfort for the wearer.
• Apart from the above-mentioned classifications, Vanity-Functional

Clothing, like body shaping, contouring and support apparel to
enhance wearer’s appearance, and Cross-Functional Assemblies,
offering multifunctional performance, life support, protection,
communication, and comfort also belong to functional apparel
section of technical textiles.
Design and Manufacturing of Functional Clothing
• Apparel with functional abilities cannot simply be mass produced

like everyday apparel.
• The adaptability of all the stages of the manufacturing process is
tested to produce functional garments that ensure workability,
desired functional performance and comfort.
• Special synergies of apparel and technologies are required for
embedding the functionality within the garment and development
of textile and apparel with built-in technologies that can enhance
the end product with extended functions and better comfort.
• Manufacturing of functional clothing also incorporates the
extensive development of replicable technologies that can provide
functional support to the end-product like protection against
temperature fluctuations, antifungal, antibacterial, protection from
ultraviolet light, blocking radiations, etc.
Design and Manufacturing of Functional Clothing
• This where designing gains importance in the manufacturing process

for functional garments.
• Once the requirements from the end product have been thoroughly
established, the appropriate material has to be identified and selected,
following which designing of the apparel assembly is done.
• Then, follows pattern engineering and final assembly of the
heterogeneous materials; creating a multilayer composite assembly
that enables the end product to adequately fulfill the comfort,
precision and functionality requirements.
• Technical textiles are the primary building blocks for most functional
garments, but to add on special functionalities, technical textiles have
to be clubbed with advanced techniques of design and manufacturing.
• Functional apparel designing thus moves away from the conventional
2D, material-centric designing towards a holistic 3D designing
approach.
Performance Tests for Functional Garments
• Fiber content, chemical tests, colorfastness, tensile strength,

etc. are some of the common tests that are done on normal
garments and materials used in them.
• With functional garments, the tests tend to focus more on the
comfort, easy-care, protective performance parameters of the
product.
• Hence, in additional to the usual tests, functional clothing goes
through extra performance tests to gauge their breathability,
anti-static, visibility and weathering properties.
• These include tests like anti-static tests, high visibility color
tests, Retro-reflective Materials Test, Breathability Tests,
Weathering Tests, [4] etc.
For more insight on this topic, visit
www.stitchdiary.com

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FUNCTIONAL GARMENTS

According to Techtextil[2], functional garments can be broadly classified

• Apart from the above-mentioned classifications, Vanity-Functional

• Apparel with functional abilities cannot simply be mass produced

• This where designing gains importance in the manufacturing process

• Fiber content, chemical tests, colorfastness, tensile strength,

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