A Glance of Shirts Fabric - A Guide to the Men's Shirt Fabric

A Glance of Shirts Fabric

Shirts fabric is mainly made of cotton fiber. 100%Cotton fabric is the most popular one. Blended with linen, wool, cashmere, spandex also exist.

Firstly, let’s know the basic knowledge: Cotton yarn

Yarn count is a numerical value, which express the coarseness or fineness (diameter) of the yarn. The spinning industry tends to use English cotton count, which is determined by the number of yarn hanks (each 840 yards long) per pound of yarn, and is notated “Ne”, also “S”. In this system, the larger the number the finer the yarn and vice versa.

The fabric woven by high yarn count is thinner, and gloss, but easy to crinkle. Generally speaking, 80s cotton fabric can be called “high-yarn count fabric”. However, it is not the higher yarn count, the better. In theory, higher yarn count requires excellent quality raw cotton and better spinning machine, the cost would be expensive. Meanwhile, the high yarn count fabric is very thin and easy to crinkle, not very suitable for daily wear.

①Poplin: as the widely used shirts fabric, the weft and warp yarn count is same, 1/1 plain weave. Flat and smooth cloth cover. Most use 50s + yarn count yarn. 80s-120s is the high yarn count fabric. The benefit of poplin is simple and elegant, solid dyed poplin shirts shows a serious and solemn feeling. We can choose such shirts on formal occasions.

 

                                 

②  Oxford: Oxford fabric is very common in leisure shirts. It’s also plain weave. The unique part ,the warp and weft yarn is different colour and size, which make the fabric pellet feeling. The yarn count is normally 40/2s or 20s/1.  But this Oxford shirts can not worn on formal occasion.

③ Pinpoint Oxford : This is the high yarn count oxford fabric. It need 80s or even thinner yarn, the feeling and cover is quite different from normal Oxford fabric. There is not much pellet feeling, but still remain the mixed color style. Pinpoint Oxford would be totally ok for formal wear. 80s/2 Pinpoint Oxford is the most popular item among wash-wear cotton shirts ( this easy-care finishing is made on finished garments, instead of fabric). Luthai Textile, Shengtai group, Esquel group are the best suppliers in the world who do garments wash-wear finishing.

 

④ Twill : Twill fabric is softer than Poplin/Oxford/Pinpoint Oxford, and with better gloss.     

⑤  Herringbone: it’s special weave, also called “Fishbone”.

⑥ Dobby: it’s weaved by jacquard loom. Some Italy and France buyer like dobby shirts.

 

⑦ End-on-end / Fil-à-FIl: light weight and good breathability, can be used on summer shirts. A one to one square plain weave, with (alternating) one colored and one (or more) white (or another color) threads. This gives the fabric the visual depth of a heathered appearance from up close, but from a distance, it appears as a solid. End-on-ends are sometimes called fil-à-fil, a French term meaning thread to thread.

 

⑧ Chambray: the warp yarn is colored while weft is white. Different from Oxford, the warp and weft is same yarn count. Thus the Chambray fabric is lighter than Oxford, soft than Pinpoint Oxford. Normally factory choose blue or grey color as warp yarn. It’s not suitable for formal wear.

⑨  Flannel: Flannel is cotton twill fabric with brushed. It feels flurry and warm. Widely used on autumn/winter shirts.

 

Source - Sherry (Mei Yang) - Fabric Specialist and Supplier - LinkedIn