What’s the difference in leggings made out of polyester and nylon?
When it comes to the fabrics that create your favourite leggings, crops and bike shorts the most commonly used fabrics for activewear are nylon, also known as polyamide, and polyester.
Nylon and polyester are both durable fabrics but there are some differences. Nylon tends to be softer and less stiff than polyester. Nylon are poor insulators; so if you're looking for better insulation properties, then best go with polyester. Nylon is known for its exceptional strength and durability, making it a popular choice for applications that require high-performance materials such as activewear.
How do you get that soft touch buttery fabric in leggings?
We know both nylon and polyester are mostly used in sportswear but they’re synthetic fibres and the hand feel might not be as good or as soft as cotton. Therefore, some factories and brands tend to apply a brushing technique, brushing is a kind of fabric treatment. Fabric is fed through a machine that has one or more rollers covered with wire bristles, abrasive paper, or other materials. The fabric passes between the rollers, and the bristles or abrasive surface rub against the surface of the fabric, raising the fibres and creating a nap to improve the hand feel, in order to have a similar "cotton" feel, which is soft and warm. Brushing can be either a light brush or a heavy brush and you can tell the difference when you touch the fabric.
Why don't they use cotton in activewear?
There a few reasons why you would go with nylon or polyester based activewear fabrics. The stretching the fabrics have, nylon and polyester have more stretch compared to cotton and cotton absorbs moisture, but, it's not a sweat wicking quick-dry fabric like nylon and polyester. Therefore the best solution is to wear sweat wicking fabrics that keep you dry and wash them often to prevent bacteria and smells (learn how to wash your activewear here).
Functional fabrics in activewear
For anti-bacterial and UV resistant fabrics, these kind of functional features can either come from the yarn (the thread that is knitted together to create the roll of fabric) or chemical finishing (once the fabric is created from the yarn they will treat the whole roll before cutting for production). The difference if its from yarn is that it can be long lasting while chemical finishing can only last for 15-20 washes.
What’s the purpose of functional fabrics in sportswear?
The propose of having anti-bacterial on fabric is because bacteria on your skin consumes the nutrients in your sweat and breaks it down, producing odour. Anti-bacterial fabric inhibits the growth of unpleasant odours before they start on the garments by controlling bacterial growth. UV resistant is defined as the ability of a material to resist ultraviolet (UV) light or sunlight. Fabric is rated differently, with the Ultraviolet Protection Factor (UPF) standard. Ultraviolet Protection Factor (UPF) indicates how much radiation (both UVB and UVA) a fabric allows to reach your skin. For example, a UPF 50 fabric blocks 98 percent of the sun’s rays and allows two percent (1/50th) to penetrate, thus reducing your exposure risk significantly.