FABRIC TESTING

Along with quality control, garments must pass strict fabric testing laws to ensure that they are safe for consumers to wear and wash with their other clothing items. Some larger retailers have their own fabric testing facilities housed inside their factories or warehouses, but smaller retailers use the garment production’s testing or use an independent testing facility. All fabric testing is carried out on small samples of the production fabrics for garments before they are put into production to ensure the fabric is suitable for purpose, and if it does not pass then a new fabric will need to be found before the garment can be produced. Luxury brands will carry out more rigorous testing than high street brands as the quality and durability of their products is more important to consumers because of the price.

These are two examples of garment testing reports, the blue fabrics passed and the red fabrics failed. The white fabric strips show how the colour would transfer onto acetate, cotton, nylon, polyester, acrylic and wool.

Figure 10 (Authors Own 2021) All garment testing is done under ‘British standard tests’ or ‘International organisation of standardization’ to ensure that all retailers are testing to the same standard. These standards are listed on the test report as ‘BS’ or ‘ISO’. The product developer and quality control team would work together to review the tests required for each garment; these are the tests required for a woven cotton skirt. The tests that will need to be done for this mini skirt range at Bershka include: Fibre composition, stability to washing, seam slippage, pilling, washing, rubbing, zips and buttons.

Fibre Composition EU Regulation 1007/2011 • No tollerance for single fibres, +/- 3% for blended fibres. • All fibres must be tested to ensure that the fabric used by the warehouse complies with what was written in the specification sheet. This information is also needed for the care label.

Dimensional Stability to Washing BS ISO EN 6330

Seam Slippage - Non Stretch BS EN ISO 13936-1

Washing BS EN ISO 105: C06

Rubbing BS EN ISO 105: X12

Zips BS EN 16732

Buttons BS 4162 • +/- 3% tollerance. • Fabric will be washed at 40 degrees celcius, and is being tested for misshaping, shrinking or stretching.

• Must be between 6mm@8kg and 6mm@12kg depending on the weight of the fabric. • Slippage must be tested to ensure the strength and durability of the garment.

• To be completed on all colours, at 40 degrees celcius. • These fabrics will be washed alongside a small piece of white fabric with different compositions on it to see how the colour could transfer with other items that the consumer already owns. • For garments where the colour will run onto other garments the factory has to add a swing ticket instructing the customer to wash with similar colours to stop other items getting ruined. • The fabric must be rubbed against a white sheet of paper multiple times to see if the colour will transfer. • This test can also be done wet to see what would happen if something was spilt on the garment or if it was worn out in the rain. • If the dye transfers this garment will also need a swing ticket to advise the customer on how to wash the garment to ensure they do not ruin any other garments. • Zips must be tested for strength and durability. • Zips that do not pass these tests will need to be swapped for a stronger one, if a zip breaks on a garment it means that the garment can no longer be worn and could result in a high return rate or a bad reputation for the brand. • Buttons must be tested to destruction and for colour transfering. • Buttons that are easiy destroyed will be replaced with something stronger, broken buttons can be dangerous and sharp. • Colour transfer from a button can ruin a garment, for example, a black button on a white garment could dye the fabric around it and result in a high return rate.