We sometimes get questions from customers about what the “seamless” in seamless underwear actually means, so we wanted to take you behind the scenes of the fabrication process. As you will learn later in this blog, the term “seamless” is an apparel industry term that means the garment is knit as a tube, much like knitting with circular knitting needles, but on a large machine.
Many people assume it means “no-show,” or “invisible under clothing.” While seamless underwear can help reduce visible lines, that is not the design priority for our seamless underwear. Our seamless construction actually means there are no side seams, which greatly reduces chafing under leggings, backpacks or outerwear.
Designed with Precision
Seamless knitting uses highly technical machines which are programmed with the dimensions and specifications of the garments that they make. Paradis Sport’s underwear design includes measurements in 17 places - those dimensions have been adjusted over as many as 8 prototypes as we get feedback from athletes who have tested them. The design information creates a program for the seamless knitting machine, which is fitted with 22 cones of yarn that feed into the knitting chamber.
There, the yarn is knit into so-called “tubes”, with no side seams. The tubes are then cut to the appropriate lengths for each pair of underwear, and the leg openings are cut out. Since nearly the entire tube is used for the finished garment, seamless manufacturing greatly reduces waste - an important consideration for our focus on sustainability and circular production processes.
The tubes are all knit in “greige” which is a gray-ish color. They are then taken to a dye house where they undergo a highly technical process using machines to dye them for a specific length of time, water at precise temperatures, and finishing solutions to make the dye colorfast. Our next blog piece will explore our use of mineral dyes which is a unique and very interesting dying process.
Next, the dyed tubes are finished by closing the front and back of the underwear, which is the only seam created.
After that, elastic is stitched into the fabric at the leg openings. This requires great precision as the tension and number of stitches per inch needs to be exact. Hours are spent each day making sure our leg openings and all the other 16 measurements are precise to the less-than-an-inch measurement that we target. Given the low margins for error, mistakes can happen during the manufacturing process and therefore we have a small number of products that do not meet our specifications (less than 1%). We closely monitor these issues.
From Our Hands to Yours
Once complete, each piece is inspected, packaged, shipped to our warehouse and delivered to you. The whole process requires great care and attention to detail at each of these steps. We take a lot of pride in our design, prototyping, and manufacturing processes and are planning another blog about the many ways our manufacturers are redefining sustainability in our industry, so stay tuned!
We have mountains of gratitude to our customers for caring, as we do, about what you wear for your first layer. Your support allows us to keep improving and innovating, so that we can make the very best underwear for active women on the market.
