The Every Fabric
Polartec, the tightly woven synthetic stuff that seems to be part of almost every outdoor or sporting garment on the rack today, began life as nothing more complex than upholstery fabric. Now it has evolved into a textile industry phenomenon with characteristics that read like a riddle out of grand opera.
It’s often close to moisture but is never wet (you can, in fact, make a diver’s wet suit out of it). It’s always close to the cold but is unusually warm. It can keep wine cold and you toasty. You’ll probably find it in your closet, but its first cousin could be covering your couch. And there’s a chance that it used to be a stack of plastic soda bottles.
Polartec is a fabric, but even that isn’t the entire answer. It’s a kind of umbrella name for a family of more than 100 synthetic fabrics that are used mostly in outdoor clothing. And a similar fabric, Polarfleece, can show up in table linens, furniture upholstery, window coverings, scarves and stadium blankets.
Manufactured by Massachusetts-based Malden Mills Industries Inc., Polartec in all its incarnations is the cornerstone of a textile industry success. It is used by dozens of outdoor clothing manufacturers, including such big industry players as Eddie Bauer, J. Crew, L.L. Bean, Lands’ End, REI and Patagonia. It was Ventura-based Patagonia that first asked Malden Mills to come up with a fabric that would be light, would wick moisture away from a perspiring body and would retain heat. It also would have to be rugged and long-lived.
Patagonia had been wrestling with the idea of a synthetic replacement for natural wool, said company spokesman Steve Rogerson. “We made our first pile jacket in 1977, a powder blue polyester pile as a replacement for a wool sweater,” Rogerson said. “Everyone involved with the outdoors was wearing natural fibers at the time and they all had drawbacks.”
Patagonia’s first try employed what Rogerson called “industrial-grade upholstery fabric. It was horrible stuff but it didn’t absorb any moisture on its own, like wool. And it provided insulation. But it didn’t look very pretty and it pilled.”
In 1979, however, Patagonia contracted with Malden Mills, which developed the first generation of what was to become the Polartec line. By 1985, the result was a dense, lightweight, double-faced brushed polyester fabric that was smooth, non-pilling, and removed moisture and retained heat.
The specifics of the process used to make Polartec, said Malden Mills spokeswoman Jennifer Sommers, are proprietary. In general, however, she said the fabrics are knitted in Maine and dyed in Massachusetts. The finishing involves machines with tiny needles that break up the fibers and shearing machines that cut the fibers to uniform length.
Before this process, Sommers said, “it looks like terry-cloth towel material, very different than the finished product.” That finished product is designed for use in one of three clothing layers: the inner, where moisture wicking is most important; the mid, where breathable lightweight characteristics are needed; and the outer, where warmth, wind resistance and water repellency are required.
Depending on use, the fabric may be paired with Lycra, cotton, wool, nylon or rayon. There is even a line of Polartec, called the Recycled Series, that is made from recycled plastic soda bottles. Patagonia uses the name Synchilla to refer to this fabric. Malden Mills literature claims that “an average-size jacket will keep 25 two-liter soda bottles out of landfills.”
Polarfleece, originally part of the early generations of what would become the Polartec line, was spun off as a separate but similar line “engineered for more of a lifestyle function,” Sommers said. “Some of the features that Polarfleece needs are not the same as Polartec needs. For instance, when you put a piece of Polarfleece on a piece of furniture, it needs to be more stable, not have as much stretch. And it needs to be stain resistant and really durable.”
One national business, in particular, makes extensive use of Polarfleece in its product line. Dakotah, a home fashion and decorative accessory company based in New York, uses Polarfleece in about a third of its products, said company CEO Troy Jones. Dakotah, Jones said, offers throw pillows, blankets, window coverings, scarves, table linens, crib blankets, and even licensed products embroidered with the logos of Harley-Davidson and, yes, Elvis made from Polarfleece. Pottery Barn’s January catalog features the store’s Dakotah line of upholstery swathed in navy or charcoal Polarfleece.
Malden Mills is the only manufacturer of Polartec and Polarfleece under those names. But, Sommers said, domestic and European competitors produce similar fabrics, usually for less money. “There’s some competition,” she said, “but we were the ones to invent it and we’re really 20 or 25 years ahead in technology.”
The latest incarnations are appearing in apparel for water sports, particularly kayaking, Sommers said. And Nicklaus Golf is scheduled to launch a new line of golf clothing this month that makes use of Polartec.
Polartec has made Malden Mills a local as well as a national success. Polartec created a $3-billion industry and helped Malden Mills boost its annual sales to more than $400 million. Even an explosion and fire that leveled much of its textile factory in Methuen, Mass., in 1995 could not slow the profits for long.
Mill owner Aaron Feuerstein vowed that the mill would be rebuilt and kept his 1,800 employees on full pay, with a Christmas bonus. In less than two months, the mill was approaching a return to full production.
