clothing and footwear industry

Introduction

also called  apparel and allied industries,  garment industries,  or  soft-goods industries,  

      factories and mills producing outerwear, underwear, headwear, footwear, belts, purses, luggage, gloves, scarfs, ties, and household soft goods such as drapes, linens, and slipcovers. The same raw materials and equipment are used to fashion these different end products.

History

      In the late Stone Age northern Europeans made garments of animal skins sewn together with leather thongs. Holes were made in the skin and a thong drawn through with an instrument like a crochet hook. In southern Europe fine bone needles (needle) from the same period indicate that woven garments were already sewn. weaving and embroidery were developed in the ancient civilizations of the Middle East. The equipment used in the fabrication of clothes remained simple and has always lagged behind the development of techniques for spinning and weaving. An important advance took place in the Middle Ages, when iron needles were introduced in Europe.

      All operations continued to be performed by hand until factory production of cloth was made possible by the invention of foot- and water-powered machinery for spinning and weaving in the 18th century. This development in turn stimulated the invention of the sewing machine. After several attempts a practical machine was patented in 1830 by Barthélemy Thimonnier, of Paris, who produced 80 machines to manufacture army uniforms. Thimonnier's machines, however, were destroyed by a mob of tailors who feared unemployment. Thimonnier's design used one thread; an American, Elias Howe (Howe, Elias), improved on it significantly with a lock-stitch machine that used two threads, a needle, and a shuttle. Though patented, it was not accepted in the United States; (United States) Howe took it to England, where he sold part of his patent rights. The objections of the U.S. tailors and seamstresses were overcome by a machine designed in 1851 by Isaac M. Singer (Singer, Isaac Merrit) of Pittstown, New York. When the sewing machine was first introduced, it was used only for simple seams; the more complex sewing operations were still done with a hand needle. The machines before Singer's were hand-powered, but Singer quickly popularized foot-powered machines.

      Before the second half of the 19th century, the fabric or leather sections of clothing and footwear were cut by shears or by a short knife with a handle about five inches (13.5 centimetres) long and a three-inch tapered blade. All pressing, whether the finished press or underpressing (between sewing operations), continued to be done with the stove-heated hand flatiron. The flatiron and the iron (later steel) needle were for a long time the only major advances in making clothing and footwear since caveman days. Tailors and dressmakers used hand needles, shears, short knives, and flatirons. Footwear was made using hand needles, curved awls, curved needles, pincers, lap stone, and hammers.

      For many years the sewing machine was the only machine used by the clothing industry. The next major development was the introduction in England in 1860 of the band-knife machine that cut several thicknesses of cloth at one time. It was invented by John Barran of Leeds, the founder of the Leeds clothing industry, who substituted a knife edge for the saw edge of a woodworking machine. The resulting increased cutting productivity motivated the development of spreading machines to spread fabric from long bolts in lays composed of hundreds of plies of fabrics. The height and count of the lay depended on the thickness and density of the fabric as well as the blade-cutting height and power of the cutting machine.

      The first spreading machines in the late 1890s, often built of wood, carried fabrics in either bolt or book-fold form as the workers propelled the spreading machines manually and aligned the superposed plies vertically on the cutting table, thus making the cutting lay. Although most of the early machines operated with their supporting wheels rotating on the cutting table, on some machines the wheels rode on the floor.

      The Reece Machinery Company of the United States pioneered buttonhole machines at the end of the 19th century; later the Singer Company developed its own buttonhole machines and machines for sewing on buttons. The introduction of the Hoffman press enabled pressing to be done more quickly than by hand, although hand pressing is still used at various stages for high-grade garments. All of these developments made the factory production of clothing economic in industrialized countries. Though the first manufactured garments were shoddy in both make and materials, they were welcomed by poorer people, who previously had had to make their own. As the industry developed it improved the quality of production and materials and catered more and more to the well-to-do.

Social aspects

      Until the second half of the 19th century, practically all clothes and shoes were produced by individual tailors and cobblers working either alone or with one or two apprentices or journeymen. The goal of every apprentice tailor was to learn how to make an entire garment as soon as possible. The output of a tailor or seamstress was usually limited to specific women's, men's, or children's garments; the journeyman sought to learn as much as possible from a specialized master craftsman. The same apprentice-journeyman system prevailed in the footwear industry, where all cobbler craftsmen were male.

      The advent of the sewing machine enlarged craftsmen's shops and converted them to factories. In many factories workers owned their machines and carried them from factory to factory whenever they changed jobs. Needleworkers lugging their machines on their backs were a common sight on the downtown East Side streets of New York City, the garment-manufacturing capital of the world at the turn of the 20th century. Taking advantage of the low capital investment per worker, many clothing entrepreneurs began to farm out their cut garments to be sewn at home. The bundle brigades—men, women, and children trudging through the streets lugging bundles of cut or finished garments to and from their flats in the East Side tenements—replaced the sewing-machine carriers of previous years.

      Most apparel factories at this time were as crowded, poorly lit, airless, and unsanitary as the home workshops. The term sweatshop was coined for such factories and home workshops at the beginning of the 20th century, when workers in the apparel industries began forming unions to get better pay and working conditions. The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, organized in 1900, and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, formed in 1914, became pioneer unions in mass-production industries in the United States as well as the largest garment unions in the world.

Modern developments

      Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the apparel industry remained largely concentrated in the United States and the United Kingdom, especially the United States, where the industry received an enormous impetus from World War II. In most other countries, garment making remained a home or cottage industry. The U.S. industry was divided among six types of firms: contractors, who produced apparel from raw material for a jobber or manufacturer; jobbers, who purchased raw materials they supplied to contractors to make into garments; manufacturers, who bought materials and designed, made, and sold the products wholesale; manufacturer-distributors, who sold their products through their own retail outlets; vertical mills, which performed all operations from yarn to finished garment under one corporate roof, and usually one plant roof; and vertical-mill distributors, who marketed their products through their own retail outlets.

      By the 1950s other countries were beginning to develop and expand their apparel industries. Besides the United Kingdom, which continued to specialize in high-quality goods, the Scandinavian countries, Belgium, The Netherlands, Canada, South Africa, Japan, and Australia expanded ready-made clothing manufacture. Another development of the 1950s was the expansion of many firms inside the industry into other areas; for example, some manufacturers of men's clothing entered the women's-wear field.

      During the 1960s the garment industry of the world underwent rapid expansion, with many of the newer producing countries showing spectacular increases. Most of the industrialized countries of Europe and North and South America, as well as Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Israel, had clothing and footwear industries capable of meeting virtually all of their own needs. The United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, West Germany, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong all expanded their export trade throughout the decade. Great Britain, which more than doubled its exports, continued to concentrate largely on men's fashion items in clothing and footwear. France exported principally high-fashion women's wear, especially in the form of selected original designs sold to manufacturers abroad to be copied and mass-produced locally. Italy became a major producer of knitted outerwear and of footwear; Israel exported knitted outerwear and all types of women's wear, especially pantyhose; Spain produced leather goods, knitwear, and high-fashion clothes; while Sweden and West Germany concentrated on sport and spectator wear.

      The tremendous increase in productivity and exports of clothing and footwear from the Orient resulted from well-engineered factories established there during the 1960s and '70s. These plants are not sweatshops like the crowded, ill-lighted factory lofts in which garment workers of the United States, the United Kingdom, and western European countries once worked 12 and 14 hours a day. In fact, many Asian factory workers have better working and living conditions than those obtained during the 1920s and '30s in the United States and Europe. In some cases Asian plant facilities are superior in working conditions and productivity to contemporary U.S. and western European factories.

      There has been, however, a distinct difference between Asia and the West in working hours (labour, hours of) and pay, though pay and hours have been upgraded in Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Beginning in 1968, for example, legislation in Hong Kong progressively reduced the country's factory work week to 48 hours, which was the average work week in clothing factories in the United States in the 1930s. By 1979 the average work week in U.S. apparel plants was 35 hours; in the United Kingdom and western Europe, the average work week ranged from 28 to 45 hours. Wage rates in Hong Kong also increased.

      Few countries of eastern Europe or Asia are major exporters of clothing, but many, notably Russia, have developed large-scale manufacturing. In several countries, highly developed production methods are used on a fairly wide scale.

Modern materials and design considerations

Raw materials

      Raw materials used for apparel and allied products may be classified according to construction. Strand construction converts yarns into woven, knitted, and braided fabrics. Matted construction converts fibres into felts, paper, and padding yardage. Molecular-mass construction produces plastic film, metal foil, and rubber sheetings, while cellular construction is the building block for skins, furs, hides, and synthetic foam.

      All four constructions are used for all types of apparel, though only minute quantities of molecular-mass and cellular construction are used for underwear. Most outerwear is made from woven and knitted fabrics with some use of hides, skins, furs, plastics, rubber, foams, and metallics. Footwear that was originally made exclusively from leather (treated hides) may now be made from fabrics, plastics, rubber, foams, and metallics.

textile fabrics

      Woven fabrics are constructed by interlacing two or more yarns (yarn) perpendicularly to each other. Braiding is an interlacing in which two or more yarns are interlaced diagonally to each other. In knitting, yarns are interlooped. Yarns are strands spun from either natural fibre such as cotton, linen, or wool or from synthetic fibres such as rayon and nylon. Practically all synthetic fibres are made originally in filament form and then cut into staples, or fibre lengths. A textile filament is a single hairlike strand of indeterminate length. The only natural filament is silk.

      Basic weave constructions are plain, twill, satin, basket, jacquard, lappet, leno, and pile. The two basic knit constructions are warp, or flat, and weft (filling), or circular knitting. Types of weft knitting are jersey, rib, purl, run resist, tuck stitch, and interlock. Types of warp knitting are tricot, milanese, and raschel simplex. The classifying is based on principles of linking the yarns in structuring the fabric. (See also textile.)

Leathers (leather) and synthetics

      Leathers are made from skins of many animals, including sheep, goats, kids, calves, pigs, horses, cattle, lizards, snakes, alligators, elk, buffalo, ostriches, kangaroos, chamois, walrus, elephants, and seals. The most common leathers are from the first seven listed; the others are exotic leathers, used to a lesser degree. Suede and patent leather are types of finishes. Plastics, foams, felts, paper, rubber, and metallics are used in thicknesses ranging from gossamer, cobweb thinness to the thickest of hides.

Quality in apparel and allied products

      Quality is measured in three characteristics—durability, utility, and emotional appeal—with respect to the raw materials used, the product design, and the construction of the product.

      Durability factors are tensile strength, tear strength, abrasion resistance, colourfastness, and cracking and bursting strength. Utility factors are air permeability, water permeability, thermal conductivity, crease retention, wrinkle resistance, shrinkage, and soil resistance. Appeal factors are eye appeal of fabric face, tactile response to fabric surface, fabric hand (reaction to hand manipulation of the fabric), eye appeal of the garment's face, silhouette, design, and drape. The principles involved are the same whether the garment is made of leather, plastic, foam, or textiles such as woven, knit, or felt fabric.

      The quality of textiles and apparel is usually governed by standards set up by the industry or the government or the two acting together, along with textile associations, testing societies, retail associations, consumer organizations, and service associations such as laundering and cleaning groups. Standards compiled in many places cover performance in cleaning and wearability for garments in several categories: tailored clothing, outerwear and rainwear, work clothes, slacks, shirts and blouses, men's underwear, women's underwear, sleepwear, and accessories.

Design in clothing and footwear

      Clothing, headwear, footwear, and accessories businesses are the fashion industries par excellence. As such their goal is to give the wearer a sense of well-being based on being attractive to oneself and others. At the same time, an inescapable function of fashion in most countries is to serve as a status symbol, a consideration leading to the wardrobe concept in designing; that is, separate business attire, evening wear, casual clothes, spectator-sportswear, active-sportswear, and other prescribed attire that clothing entrepreneurs and designers promote.

      Designers use five elements to create a design that will stimulate the potential consumer to buy: (1) colour, (2) silhouette, (3) drape, (4) texture, and (5) line balance on the product's surface. Design ideas are derived from configurations or colour combinations or both in historical, ethnic, national, natural, geographic, and current themes that can be advertised and promoted to boost sales. Besides choosing textiles and other raw materials with specific properties and characteristics of colour, drape, hand, and texture, the designer selects findings—buttons, zippers, snaps, grommets, thread, lace, tapes, braids, medallions, sequins, and a variety of ornaments and closures—as decorative devices to impart the desired design effect. Line balance is generally achieved by the sectional patterns of raw materials such as textiles and leather that the designer shapes to form the finished product. Fashion in clothing and footwear operates in cycles, but with respect to design construction, clothing and footwear may be lined, interlined, or unlined regardless of the cycle.

      Designers use a variety of fitting forms for clothing, shoe lasts for footwear, and hat blocks for headwear, approximating human anatomical dimensions. The basic patterns that fit the form, last, or block with minimal seams and skintight precision form the foundation pattern. In the drafting method of designing style patterns, the designer manipulates the foundation pattern to develop the style pattern, which is used to cut the raw materials into the sections required for the garment. The drapery method is used by designers who prefer to drape the actual material for the garment on the form, block, or last; cutting patterns for cutting the raw materials are traced from the draped sections. Cutting patterns may be made of rigid or semirigid paper or plastics.

      Pattern grading, making sets of patterns to fit a range of sizes, is the next step in the design process. Anthropometric tables for sizing apparel have been compiled by various government agencies and other sources. Formerly pattern grading was a completely manual drafting process, but in the 1950s pattern-grade machines were invented to increase the speed of grade-drafting patterns.

      These machines were manually paced; that is, they followed the lead of a draftsman. But in 1967 the computerized grader machine was invented to grade and cut patterns directly from an original set, performing automatically without manual contact with the drafting and cutting process. By 1970 various U.S., British, and Japanese computerized (computer) graders were available, which automatically take measurements from a set of style patterns, then grade, draft, and cut sets of patterns in the sizes desired. These computerized graders contain memory banks of the anthropometric specifications required. Some computerized grading machines can provide graded patterns in any of three media: acetate patterns for making photomarkers; rigid plastic patterns for conventional chalk, crayon, pen, pencil, or spray manual marking methods; or stack drafts, which put the entire desired size range from smallest to largest, concentrically, on one sheet. In conjunction with any of these, the computer can issue data sheets with costing and material usage per size or range. The actual processing of the raw material begins after the patterns are graded.

Modern manufacturing processes and equipment

      Many different sequences of the three major processes, cutting, sewing, and pressing, are used. The exact sequence depends on the raw materials for the garment, the processing equipment, the garment's design, and quality specifications. Five other processes are used to assemble, decorate, and finish the components into the finished garment: baking or curing, cementing, fusing, molding, and riveting, including grommetting and nailing.

Cutting processes

      Cutting involves three basic operations: making the marker, spreading the fabric, and chopping the spread fabric into the marked sections. The marker, or cutting lay, is the arrangement of patterns on the spread fabrics. When hides are cut the lay length is the hide size; many hides are cut in single plies. Short lengths are spread by hand, but large lays, made from large bolts of material, range in length to over 100 feet (30 metres) and heights containing hundreds of plies and must be spread with travelling spreading machines. Stationary spreaders are used for small sample lots. Manual and semi-automatic spreading machines are propelled manually over the lay length as the machine feeds the fabric ply onto the cutting table. Some machines book-fold the successive plies as the fabric is spread; others have turntable devices permitting one-way spreads. Lays may be spread either with all plies of fabric facing one way or with successive plies facing each other in face-to-face spreads. Turntable spreaders were introduced in 1920, face-to-face spreaders in 1938, and in 1946, electric-powered spreading machines that spread a full bolt automatically without manual attention. In 1950, cutting blades were invented to cut the ply at each end of the lay as it is spread. These cut-off spreaders are automatic. Electric-eye edge controls for precise superposing of plies were available on automatic machines in 1962. In 1969 piggyback automatic spreaders were introduced, which carry a second bolt that is spread as soon as the first bolt is on the lay.

      The marker is superposed on the completed lay. Makers are made of one of three materials: the fabric being cut, an inexpensive felt of muslin type cloth, or one of a variety of papers. When paper with a low coefficient of friction is used, the marker is fastened to the lay by stapling or two-sided adhesive stripping. Papers with an adhesive on one side can be heat-sealed to a fabric and are commonly used with woollens or soft fabrics. Photomarking machines are used for duplicating often-used paper markers. Many markers are first made in miniature, with precise, scaled-down patterns to determine the optimum layout for minimal yardage; the optimal miniature marker is then used as the guide for making the full-scale cutting marker. Some automated equipment is capable of both making the graded pattern and laying it out on the fabric to minimize waste. A sprayer machine, which sprays the entire length of the lay around the pattern, eliminates the need for manual marking-in.

      Six types of machines are available to chop or cut a lay into the component parts of the marker: rotary blade machines; vertical reciprocal-blade machines; band-knives, similar to band-saws; die clickers, or beam presses; automatic computerized cutting systems with straight blades; and automated computerized laser-beam cutting machines.

      Round-knife machines rotate a circular blade down into the lay whereas straight-knife machines oscillate a straight blade in and out of the lay in jigsaw fashion. Both machines are portable, manual-paced machines; that is, the machine is pushed through the lay as the blade cuts. Some models have dual speed controls and automatic blade sharpeners. In band-knife cutting, blocks cut from the lay with round or straight-knife machines are trimmed precisely to pattern specifications as the blocks are manipulated against the band-knife rotating in a fixed orbit. Though most band-knife machines are stationary, some are mounted on travelling platforms that carry machine and operator along the entire length of the cutting table, permitting band-knife cutting at any point of the lay.

      Round-knife machines vary in diameter and rotary speed of the blade. Vertical and band blades come in circular, waved, or sawtooth perimeters. Vertical blade edges may be straight, waved, notched, serrated, or striated; band blades may be straight, waved, or saw-toothed. Straight-edge blades including the circular perimeter of rotary blades are used generally; the others are special-purpose blades.

      Die clickers cut by pressing dies, superposed on the lay, through the depth of the lay. The cutting dies outline the patterns to be cut. Die presses are stationary or travelling; travelling die presses cover the entire width of the lay and move throughout the lay length and press dies into the fabric with intermittent strokes across the lay width until the entire lay is cut. In stationary clickers, the lay or section of the lay is pulled under the pressure beam for each die cutting stroke. Machine cutting of footwear, bags, pocketbooks, and similar items is done with die presses.

      In automatic computerized cutting systems, introduced in 1967, the lay is covered with a thin plastic film drawn firmly to the lay by a vacuum operating through a porous cutting table and the porous fabric of the lay. The vacuum pulls the impermeable film firmly onto the lay preventing any movement during the cutting action. There are two types of cutting actions: the lay may be stationary and the knife move or the lay may move forward and the knife move horizontally.

      A cutting system introduced in 1971 employed a computer-controlled laser beam to burn, or vaporize, the fabric rather than cut it. Unlike other methods requiring the accumulation of large orders before it becomes efficient to cut a specific style, the laser system, which provided for storage of programmed cutting instructions, allowed one complete garment to be cut at a time from a single layer of material. Among the advantages claimed for the system are the elimination of variations within a specific size, improved cloth utilization, efficient production of smaller orders, lower inventory requirements, and faster delivery.

      Two types of auxiliary cutting equipment are used: cutting drills to drill holes through the superposed plies in a lay, and notches to notch the perimeters of the cut sections. These holes and notches guide the sewing operations. Cut sections are ticketed to insure proper sizing and shading during the assembly of the garment.

Sewing production

      Clothing, footwear, and allied industries have been known as the needle trades because sewing is the major assembly and decorative process used. Some items such as plastic raincoats and footwear are assembled and decorated by fusing, but only a tiny fraction of garments were produced completely by fusing, cementing, and mold casting.

      Over 10,000 different models of industrial sewing machines have been made. Most are produced in Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States. Sewing machines are classified, according to stitch type and bed type (the shape of the machine's frame). The seven basic beds, or frames, are flatbed, raised-bed, post, cylinder, off-the-arm, closed-vertical, and open-vertical. The bed type is determined by the manner in which fabric passes through the machine as it sews. There are four categories with regard to operational control, all electrically powered: manual-paced, automatic cycle with manual loading and extraction, fully automatic, and automated.

      The prime characteristic of a sewing machine is the stitch it makes. Until 1926, stitches were classified willy-nilly with trade terms that often varied from one place to another and even from shop to shop. In 1926 the U.S. government became the first government to issue a seam and stitch classification to specify its requirements. During the 1960s other countries began to adopt the latest versions of these specifications for sewing equipment and sewn products, and these specifications are now being adopted throughout the world for industrial sewing.

      The first hand-powered sewing machines in the 19th century sewed 20 stitches per minute. At the turn of the century some electrically powered machines sewed 200 stitches, and by mid-20th century machine speeds reached 4,500. By 1970 most machines could sew 7,000, and some could sew 8,000 stitches per minute. The first integrated sewing machine was introduced in 1969 by the Singer Company. Before that, manual-paced sewing machines had a separate clutch motor with start, speed, and braking controlled by foot treadle action; a belt drive ran the machine via treadle action to the motor's clutch, which actuated or stopped the belt drive while the motor ran continuously. The integrated sewing machine eliminated the separate motor, its clutch, and the belt drive. The integrated machine frame contains the motor module, which is actuated, controlled, and stopped by a four-speed switch operated by a device resembling the former foot treadle. The motor in this machine rotates only when the treadle is actuated, and so electricity is used only when the machine is sewing.

      Special-purpose machines sew automatic cycles for operations such as buttonholing, button sewing, contour seaming, profile stitching, seaming for patch pockets, dart stitching, tacking, welt pocketing, and padding cycles such as blindstitching interlinings to the outer shell. Semiautomatic special-purpose machines are manually reloaded after each task; in automatic machines reloading and extraction are both done by the machine. Contour seamers are sewing machines that sew curved seams automatically; most such machines were semiautomatic by 1970. Profile seamers and stitchers seam or stitch angular or curved designs in which a backtrack path, such as a U seam or angled seam (a square U), is sewed. These machines, too, were semiautomatic by 1970.

      A sequential sewing machine introduced in the 1960s repeatedly sews an automatic cycle on the same garment with predetermined spacing between the operations. A sequential buttonhole machine, for example, sews five buttonholes on a shirt front automatically, one after the other, with given spacing. Sequential sewing machine modules are synchronized automatic systems of two or more sewing machines that sew the operation in series; the first machine completes its operation, the garment or section is fed into the second machine for the next operation, etc. For example, the first machine sews the centre front placket of a shirt front; the second machine sews a series of buttonholes on the placket. In tandem-machine arrangements, two machines sew simultaneously on the same unit. Gang-machine operation is an arrangement of three or more machines operating automatically under the care of one operator. The introduction in 1930 of stop-motion devices for stopping a sewing machine when the thread broke or ran out made gang-machine operation possible, as well as tandem machines in the 1940s and sequential machines and modules in the 1960s.

      Before 1950, most industrial sewing machines had only the basic mechanical-linkage system of shafts, cams, gears, rods, belts, chains, and pulleys, with manual lubricating systems. Higher speeds, fully automatic cycling, and automatic sequential systems were developed later and were made possible by automatic lubrication systems with pumps and reservoirs, fluidic controls, and electronic controls.

      The quality of manual-paced sewing depends on the integration of six variables: the needle, its size, shape, and finish; the type of feed system; the coordination of needle and feed; thread tension adjustments; the thread; and operator handling. Seam slippage, yard severance, puckering, elongation, gathering, and feed mark off are some of the quality areas affected. Machine manufacturers make needles in a variety of diameters, point shapes, and finishes as well as different types, shapes, and sizes of feeds and presser feet to improve quality and output.

      Sewing machine attachments are jigs and fixtures used with sewing machines to decrease downtime (the time a machine is inoperative) and thus increase productivity by getting the fabric to the needle, aligning and repositioning fabric under the needle, or extracting and disposing of the sewed materials sooner. Trade terms for some of these sewing aids are needle positioners, stackers, programmers, guides, hemmers, binders, thread trimmers, stitching templets, seam folders, pipers, and shirrers. Needle positioners automatically set the needle in or out of the sewn materials as desired when the machine stops. Stackers extract and dispose the sewed sections with one of five actions: flipping, sliding, lifting, shuttle-drop, or conveyor cycle. Programmed sewing is an automatic sewing cycle induced by a module set to control the time sequence of initial positioning, sewing, repositioning if needed, thread trimming, extraction, and disposal. The times and sequence of these elements in the sewing operation may be changed for different sewing cycles. Automated sewing is a self-correcting system when the section sewed varies beyond given tolerance limits.

      Fusing and cementing are two major processes for stitchless or decorative seaming in apparel and allied production. In fusing, the seam bond or decoration is formed by melting some fibre or finish content in the material in a manner that joins the sections or decorates in the desired area. In cementing, the bond, or decoration, is made by an adhesive, such as cement, glue, or plastic, which is applied to the materials during or immediately preceding the cementing process. Fusing is either by direct heat; by hot-head fusing presses, in which pressure surfaces are heated by electric heating grids or steam; or by electronic high-frequency or infrared systems. Cementing processes use mechanical-pressure systems with or without heat application, depending on the adhesive and materials used. Fusing, introduced in the 1950s, is replacing sewing in some operations such as joining interlining to collars, cuffs, and coat fronts as well as seaming clothing and footwear made from certain synthetic yarns or plastic films.

Pressing and molding (mold) processes

      Molding is any process that changes the surface characteristics or topography of a garment or shoe or one of its sections by application of heat, moisture, or pressure. Pressing, pleating, blocking, mangling, steaming, creasing, curing, and casting are trade terms for various molding processes in producing clothing and footwear.

      Pressing has two major divisions: buck pressing and iron pressing. A buck press is a machine for pressing a garment or section between two contoured, heated, pressure surfaces that may have steam and vacuum systems in either or both surfaces. Before 1905 all garment pressing was done by hand irons heated directly by gas flame, stove plate heat, or electricity; the introduction of the steam buck press changed most press operations. The first pressing machines had no pressure, heat, or steam controls such as those built after 1940. Modern buck presses are made to fit certain garment sections, such as a jacket front, pant leg, pant top, or shoulder area for a specific style and size. These improved buck presses have gauges to measure and control steam pressure and temperature, mechanical pressure, vacuum, and the press cycle time. Cycle-time controls permit one operator to work a series of machines. For example, a presser handles four presses doing the same or different operations; by the time a worker finishes extracting and loading the fourth machine, the first machine is ready for extraction and reloading. Cycle-time controls apply and shut off steam and vacuum action and open the pressing machine automatically. Conveyor buck-presses, which may move intermittently or continuously, are buck-pressing systems in which sections or garments to be pressed are fed into a buck press and extracted from it by a conveyor belt.

      In iron pressing, a hand iron functions as the top pressure surface. The two major types of hand irons are steam ejectors and dry irons. Electric hand irons are equipped with thermostats that regulate temperature. Steam-heated irons, whether ejection or dry, have fixed temperatures depending on the pressure of the steam supplied to the iron. Many hand irons are equipped with lift devices and gear drives to control stroke rate and minimize operator fatigue. Hand irons are made in a variety of sizes, weights, shapes, and surfaces; the specific usage determines the combination.

Pleating

      Pleating is the process of putting a design of creases into fabric. Accordion, side, box, inverted, sunburst, air-tuck, Van Dyke, and crystal are trade terms for some pleat designs. Pleating is accomplished by machine or by the use of interlocking paper pleat patterns. Pleating machines have blades or rotary gearlike surfaces that crease the fabric as it passes between two heated rotary mangles, setting the creases. Machines may be used for pleating either specific cut garment sections or lengths of fabric that are then cut after pleating into garment sections. In pattern pleating, the garment section or fabric length is sandwiched between two complementarily creased plies of paper that shape the fabric into the desired pleat design. This creased trio is inserted in a steam chamber, or autoclave, for a given length of time, depending on fabric characteristics and pleat durability desired.

Creasing

      Creasing machines differ from pleating machines in that they fold the edges of garment sections and set the fold crease as an aid for such operations as sewing the edges of collars, cuffs, and patch pockets. Creasing diminishes the time for positioning the creased section during sewing.

Mangling

      Mangling is the process of pressing a garment or section between two heated cylindrical surfaces.

Blocking

      Blocking consists of encompassing a form, block, or die with the garment with skintight precision. The item is blocked or pressed by superposing a complementary pressing form that sandwiches the shaped garment or section between the interlocked blocks. This process is used for such items as hats, collars, cuffs, and sleeves.

Curing

      Curing consists of baking a garment or garment section in a heated chamber to either set creases in the fabric permanently or to decompose auxiliary media used as a sewing aid. For example, curing permanently sets previously pressed creases in certain permanent press, durable press, and wash and wear garments. Curing decomposes the backing material used for facilitating the embroidering in certain embroidered garments.

casting

      Casting consists of making a garment or garment section by pouring a fluid or powder into a mold that forms the garment or section when the fluid or powder evaporates or solidifies.

Special footwear processes

      Footwear may be classified according to the section of the foot it covers and how it is held on: sandals (sandal), slip-ons, oxfords, ankle-support shoes (shoe), and boots. The term shoe refers to footwear exclusive of sandals and boots. Sandals cover only the sole and are held onto the foot by strapping. Slip-ons cover the sole, instep, and may or may not cover the entire heel; styles include pumps and moccasins. Oxfords cover the sole, instep, and heel and have closures such as laces, straps, buckles, buttons, or elastic to secure the shoe to the foot. Ankle-support shoes cover sole, instep, heel, and ankle and secure the shoe to the foot with a closure device; the chukka is an ankle-support style. Boots cover the foot from the sole to various heights above the ankle: shin height, calf length, knee length, and hip length. Closures may or may not be used, depending on the degree of snugness desired.

      Most footwear factories that produce dress, play, and work footwear in slip-on, oxford, ankle-support, and boot categories from leather or synthetics simulating leather have eight processing departments: (1) cutting; (2) stitching, which sews the upper section above the sole; (3) stock fitting, which prepares the sole section; (4) lasting, which attaches the upper and its lining to a wooden foot shape, the last, in order to assemble the sole section to the upper; (5) bottoming, which attaches the sole to the upper; (6) heeling, which attaches and shapes the heel bottom into its final form; (7) finishing, which includes polishing, extracting the lasts, stamping the shoe brand and name on the sole, inserting heel and sole pads, and inspection of the inner shoe; and (8) treeing, which includes attaching laces, bows, and buckles, and final cleaning and inspection.

      There are three basic methods of attaching soles to uppers. The bottoming may be done by sewing, cementing, nailing, or a combination of these three joining techniques. Nailing includes the use of nails, screws, staples, or pegs. Sewing may be performed with or without the use of welt, insole, middle sole, and filler sections; the same applies to cementing soles to uppers. Sole sections vary in ply count; a three-ply sole has a middle sole sandwiched between outer sole and inner sole; the two-ply sole consists of outer and inner sole; the single sole has only one ply.

Production control and plant considerations

Division of labour

      In the first clothing and footwear factories, one worker assembled and finished an entire garment or shoe. But this whole-garment system rarely existed after 1940 for ready-to-wear apparel. Sectionalization came into being for three reasons: (1) to increase productivity per man-hour, (2) to improve product quality, and (3) to reduce inventory-in-process time. The main function of production control is to schedule the operations required to produce the garment or shoe in such a manner as to hold the total processing time, or calendar time, to a minimum. This scheduling is accomplished by determining the operations required per garment to yield the desired quality with minimal processing costs (labour, utilities, capitalization) and by arranging these operations so that most of them may be done simultaneously in the least number of successive steps, or time units. If 24 operations are required to make a given garment, a schedule in which these 24 operations are performed in six time units, with four operations made simultaneously in each unit, is superior to a schedule requiring seven or more successive time units with four or fewer simultaneous operations in each time unit.

Unit flow and multiple flow

      There are two basic section systems in assembly-line production: unit flow; and multiple flow, or bundle or batch system. The unit-flow system is continuous; the unit moves to the next operation as soon as it is processed by the previous operation. The multiple-flow system is intermittent; a given group of units moves to the next operation simultaneously as a bundle, or batch, after the last unit in the batch is processed in the previous operation. Regardless of which flow is used, efficient production control depends on rapid, synchronized movement of the garment sections.

Plant layout and materials handling

      To minimize the cost of transporting and storing processed garment sections from the first operation through all the prescribed production sequence until completion, two factors are considered: the arrangement of processing equipment to minimize distances between operations; and the utilization of labour, transport equipment, and utilities to minimize total cost per product moved.

      Transportation equipment such as chutes, conveyor systems, and carts are utilized to transport the work through the successive operations. Some conveyor systems, such as Eton of Dalsjöfårs, Sweden, incorporate a stationary synchronized extractor on the conveyor that extracts and disposes a sewed section to a mobile conveyor hanger.

      The two types of plant layout are process layout and product layout. In process layout, equivalent processing equipment is grouped in the same area regardless of whether the product can be passed through successive operations without backtracking. In production layout, processing equipment is arranged in the succession required for making the garment in the prescribed sequence without backtrack and with minimal transport between successive operations. Most apparel and allied production is with product layout, but in a few instances the process layout is more economical.

Jacob Solinger

Additional Reading

J. Solinger, Apparel Manufacturing Analysis (1961) and Apparel Manufacturing Handbook (1980), detailed analyses of all subjects in the manufacture of apparel and allied items; H.C. Carr (ed.), The Clothing Factory (1972), provides information and analysis on garment technology and garment production management; J. Korn (ed.), Boot and Shoe Production (1953), and W.E. Cohn, Modern Footwear Materials and Processes (1968), detailed technology of footwear production; United Shoe Machinery Corp., How Modern Shoes are Made (1936), a concise booklet outlining the elements in constructing basic shoe styles; M.D. Danish and L. Stein (eds.), ILGWU News History, 1900–1950 (1950), a history of the first 50 years of the ILGWU; Singer Sewing Machine Co., Invention of the Sewing Machine (1955), a pamphlet that gives a brief history of the invention of the sewing machine; Manufacturing Clothier (1946– ), a monthly magazine that reports current changes and innovation in the design, production, and marketing of women's wear in Europe, with particular emphasis on the British Isles; FemmeLines (1956– ), a bi-monthly magazine dealing with trends and innovation in the design, production, and marketing of women's wear in the United States; MascuLines (1956– ), a bi-monthly magazine dealing with trends and innovation in the design, production, and marketing of men's wear in the United States; Daily News Record (1892– ), a daily paper reporting trends and innovation in design, production, and marketing of men's and boys' wear; Women's Wear Daily (1910– ), a daily paper that reports trends and innovation in the design, production, and marketing of women's and children's wear; The Bobbin (1958– ), a monthly magazine for management in the needle trades.

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