Polar fleece is a soft fabric made from polyester that is napped and insulating.
PolarFleece is a trademark registered by Malden Mills (now Polartec, LLC) with the United States Patent and Trademark Office on October 6, 1981.[Polarfleece; Registration Number 1297628; Malden Mills, Inc., 46 Stafford St. Lawrence, Massachusetts 01841; First use June 16, 1980; Filing Date October 6, 1981; Published for Opposition July 17, 1984; Registration Date September 25, 1984] Malden Mills developed polar fleece in 1979.
Uses
Polar fleece is used in
, hats,
,
sweatpants,
(nappies), gym clothes,
,
pajamas, blankets, and high-performance outdoor clothing. The produced fleece can be used to create clothes that are very light, soft, and easy to wash. Polar fleece can stretch more easily in one direction than in others.
[ Polar Fleece history and the history of pile fabrics Bookrags.com]
History
Polar fleece originated in
Massachusetts in 1979 when Malden Mills and Patagonia developed Synchilla (synthetic chinchilla).
It was a new, light, strong pile fabric meant to mimic, and in some ways surpass,
wool. Malden Mills CEO
Aaron Feuerstein intentionally declined to
patent polar fleece, allowing the material to be produced cheaply and widely by many vendors, leading to the material's quick and wide acceptance.
Malden Mills registered PolarFleece as a trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office on October 6, 1981.
[Polarfleece; Registration Number 1297628; Malden Mills, Inc., 46 Stafford St. Lawrence, Massachusetts 01841; First use June 16, 1980; Filing Date October 6, 1981; Published for Opposition July 17, 1984; Registration Date September 25, 1984]
Characteristics
Variants
A lightweight, warm and soft fabric, fleece has some of
wool's good qualities. Polar fleece garments are traditionally available in the micro, 100, 200, and 300 variants, where the numbers represent the fleece's weight in grams per square meter (gsm). The heavier fleece are warmer.
Fleece can range from being high loft to tightly knit. High loft fleece is warmer because it traps tiny air pockets which holds body heat.
Fleece can also be made out of recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles, or even recycled fleece.
Maintenance
To prevent high pile fleece from matting, they can be brushed regularly (which also removes dirt) and hung rather than folded.
To remove already existing matting, rinse it in cool water and while it is still damp, gently and unidirectionally brush the matting out (while optionally lightly spraying it with water), and then use a lint roller.
Fleece is machine washable and dries quickly.
Fleece readily generates static electricity, which causes the accumulation of lint, dust, and pet hair. It is also susceptible to damage from high temperature washing, tumble dryer, or ironing under unusual conditions. Lower-quality polyester fleece material is also prone to pilling (i.e., the jacket's fabrics break and reform into tiny balls on the jacket).
Effectiveness
It is
hydrophobic, but it is not waterproof and can absorb water. When wet, it holds less than 1% of its weight in water, and depending on its weight takes 1–4 hours to dry (even on your body in cold temperatures).
[ Moisture Buffering ][ Choosing and Using a Quarter Sheet. Discussion of characteristics of wool vs. fleece] Fleece loses most of its insulating quality when wet.
Regular polar fleece is not
Windproof smock.
[ Polartec Windpro web page ][ Polartec Windpro web page ]
Microfiber pollution
Washing synthetic textiles like fleece releases microfibers, a type of
microplastic.
The release of these microfibers into the wastewater is proportional to the microplastic pollution in soil, marine, and freshwater habitats.
Studies also show that tumble drying of polyester releases airborne
microplastics.
See also
External links
