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You're rubbing off on me!

Oh yeah it's newsletter time again!! This week we have the one and only Bridget, our Fashion Designer, breaking down a pretty common theme in a lot of clothing manufacturing - Color Fastness and the challenges of making incredible multi-colored garments.

Bridget Bergman
Fashion designer in pursuit of unfaded textiles

We’ve got a TON of styles in the works right now - some are similar to what you’ve seen from us this year like WAN Hoodie and Swacket, and others are a bit more “mainstream,” including a whole line-up of color block hoodies.

Lloyd originally designed a set of colorblocks to match the color palettes of each of our main channels - LTT, TechQuickie, TechLinked, and ShortCircuit - and I’ve been working with our WAN Hoodie supplier to make these a reality.

We love the look of the styles and the feel of the fabric, but we’ve run into a familiar problem that often comes up with this type of color blocking… the contrasting colors are rubbing off on each other when washed.

Let’s quickly define a couple terms. “Color fastness” is a description of how well a material’s color resists change - so if a fabric has low color fastness, it’s likely that that fabric’s color will rub off on other materials, your skin, or other surfaces. “Crocking” is the industry term for what we’re seeing with these hoodies, where the color from one material is rubbing off on other materials around it. If you’ve ever worn a pair of brand new jeans before washing them, you’ve probably experienced some crocking in your life.

Many different things can impact a material’s color fastness like the type of fiber, the type of dye, color choice, and the way that the dyed fabric is finished. 

You may have seen washing instructions on some clothes like “wash with like colors.” When you see that, you can safely assume that the manufacturer is using a dyed fabric that is either too difficult - or too expensive - to improve when it comes to color fastness.

With our color block hoodie, we’re using a 100% cotton fabric and we’ve designed it with multiple fun, bright & dark colors right next to each other. We’re working with the mill and manufacturer to add a special dying agent which should significantly increase the color fastness of these garments beyond what we’ve seen on our samples. So unless there’s a very good reason for it, you should never see this type of fastness issue on a finished garment from lttstore.

As with most things, it’s always important to follow instructions. If your pants say wash with like colors, or your graphic tee says hang to dry, you should always assume that the intent behind those instructions is to maintain the look and quality of the garment. Colors can run, artwork can peel or crack, or your Large hoodie could come out of the dryer as a Small. It can be a pain at times, but we (and most manufacturers) run a ton of tests on our garments before production to ensure that they look just as good on wear #100 as they did on wear #1.

If you don't want to wait for us to resolve these issues with our color block hoodies, we actually just launched our new Indoor Hoodie, which is perfect for lounge sessions or gaming over the holidays. We've got pretty limited quantities available in this first run, so grab one now if you're interested!

Nick
COO
lttstore.com / Creator Warehouse
@nicklmg