Khaki : Khaki uniforms were introduced y Sir harry Burnett Lumsden from British colonial troops in India and were later widely used at the time of Indian Mutiny (1857-58) and became the official color for uniforms of British armies, native and colonial, in India. Today the word is used both as a color and as a style of trouser, Khaki is beige to yellow military color and the garment is usually a men’s army style trouser made of a twill cotton fabric.
Laundry: A manufacturing company that takes unwashed jeans, and processes them. This processing includes washing, stone washing, sandblasting, and garment dyeing. Laundries today are critical in making jeans look commercial and wash development has become equally important to fabric development in the Jeanswear industry. The best laundries and was developments come from Italy, Japan and the United States.
Left Hand Twill: A fabric weave where the twill line runs from the top left hand corner of the fabric towards the bottom right. Usually in piece dyed fabrics, left hand twill fabrics are woven from single plied yarns in the warp. In the jeans industry Lee has always used Left Hand twill denims as their basic denim.
Linen: A fibre taken from straw of the flax plant. The stems are steeped in water to remove resinous matter and allow fermentation to take place. After fermentation is completed, the fibrous matter is separated from the woody matter a spun into thread, the fibre can be from 2”-36” long with a natural color that caries from light ivory to dark tan or grey. Linen is very absorbent, takes dyes more readily than cotton but has poor resiliency.
Loom: The weaving machine. Most famous loom manufactures are Sulzer Ruti from Switzerland, Picanol from Belgium, Dornier from France, Tsudakoma/Toyoda from Japan and Vamatex from Italy. The word loom (from Middle English lome, “tool”) is applied to any set of devices permitting a warp to be tensioned and a shed to be formed. The warp to be tensioned and a shed to be formed. The warp shed is formed with the aid of heddles where one heddle is provided from each end of warp thread. By pulling one end of the heddle or the other, the warp end can be deflected to one side of the other of the main sheer of the ends. The frame holding the heddles is called a harness. Today there are three kinds of looms: dummy shuttle, rapier, a fluid jet, the dummy-shuttle type, the most successful of the shuttle less looms, makes use of a dummy shuttle, a projectile that contains no weft but that passes through the shed in the manner of the shuttle an leaves the shed in the manner of the shuttle and leaves a trail of yarn behind it. The rapier type conveys a pick of weft from a stationary package through the shed by means of either a single rapier or a pair of rapiers. Rapiers are either rigid rods or flexible steel tapes, which are straight when in the shed but on withdrawal are would onto a wheel, in order to save floor space, rapier looms are, on the whole, simpler and more versatile than a dummy-shuttle looms bur are slower in weaving sped. There are of two kinds of fluid-jet looms, one employing a jet of air, the other a water jet, to propel a measured length of weft through the shed, The significance of this is that nothing solid is passed into the shed other than the weft, which eliminates the difficulties normally associated with checking and warp protection, and reduces the noise to an acceptable level. The machines can attain great weaving speed and output.
Looped Dyed: One of the three major industrial methods of dyeing indigo yarns.
Lycra®: DuPont’s trademark for spandex fibre.
Lyocell: (Tencel): the generic name given to the cellulosic fibre developed by Courtaulds and marketed by then under the Tencel brand name.
Man Made Fibre: Viscose and Acetate, derived from cellulose were almost all the man-made fibres in existence before WW II. During the 1930’s, after intensive fibre research, several new synthetic fibres were produced experimentally which led to the production of nylon (DuPont’s invention), the first commercially successful synthetic-textile fibre. Since that time, synthetic-fibre production has created polyesters, acrylics, polyolefins, and others,
Mercerization: An industrial process used on yarn o fabrics to increase luster as well as dye affinity. It can also be used (on fabrics destined for the Jeanswear industry) for keeping dye on the surface of the yarns or fabrics so that dyes do not fully penetrate the fibre.
Natural Dyes: Up to the middle of the 19th century there were only natural dyes and most of these were vegetable origin. Natural indigo being one of the more important dyes. Natural dyes usually have no affinity for textile fibres until the fibres are treated with aluminum, iron, or tin compounds to receive the dye (mordanting). This is a problematic process and the dyes in any case have poor fastness to sun or abrasion.
Natural Fibres: Any hair like raw material directly obtainable from an animal, vegetables, or mineral source that can be convertible, after spinning, into yarns and then into woven cloth.The usefulness of a fibre for commercial purposes is determined by its length, strength , pliability, elasticity, abrasion resistance, absorbency, and various surface properties, The earliest indication of hemp is in South east Asia 4500 BC, linen in Egypt in 3400BC , and in cotton fibre use is in India in 300BC
Nylon (PA): Nylon is a synthetic fibre invented by DuPont that was used originally for hosiery but is currently used in many applications. Nylon is naturally water repellant, easy to dye, and very strong. These features have helped nylon replace cotton in many industrial uses like bags and flags and in very popular for use in the outerwear apparel industry. Nylon has a poor absorbency.