1. Check the label
First, the most direct way is to check the label of the clothing. Regular clothing brands will clearly mark the composition of the fabric on the label. The label usually lists the content of various fibers, such as cotton, polyester, spandex, etc. Through this information, we can initially understand the main fabric composition of the clothing.
2. Look with your eyes and touch with your hands
Different fabrics have their own characteristics in appearance. For example, cotton fabrics are soft, breathable, and have natural textures on the surface; T/C fabrics are smoother, crisper, and less prone to wrinkles; T/R fabrics have a bit of sparkling and slippery surface.
Specifically:
1. Feel:
Very soft are silk, viscose, and nylon.
2. Weight:
Lighter than silk are nylon, acrylic, and polypropylene; heavier than silk are cotton, linen, viscose, and rich fiber; similar to silk weight are vinylon, wool, acetate, and polyester.
3. Strength:
Stretched by hand until broken, the weaker ones are silk, acetate fiber, and wool; the stronger ones are cotton, linen, synthetic fibers, etc.; the ones with significantly reduced strength after getting wet are protein fibers, viscose, and cuprammonium fibers.
4. Elongation:
When stretched by hand, the ones with greater elongation are wool and acetate fiber; the smaller ones are cotton and linen; the moderate ones are silk, viscose, and most synthetic fibers.
Differentiate various fibers by sensory characteristics
Cotton: fine and soft, low elasticity, easy to wrinkle.
Linen: feels rough and hard, often has defects.
Silk: shiny, soft and thin, with a rustling sound when pinched and grasped, and a cool feeling.
Wool: elastic, soft luster, warm to the touch, not easy to wrinkle.
Polyester: good elasticity, smooth, strong, stiff, and cool.
Nylon: not easy to break, elastic, smooth, light texture, not as soft as silk.
Vinylon: Similar to cotton, with a dark luster, not as soft as cotton, poor resilience, and easy to wrinkle.
Acrylic: Good warmth retention, high strength, lighter than cotton, soft and fluffy.
Viscose fiber: Softer than cotton, with a stronger surface luster than cotton, but poor fastness.
3. Burning method
This is a more professional identification method. By taking a small piece of fabric for burning, observing the characteristics such as flame, smoke color and ash, the composition of the fabric can be preliminarily judged. For example, when cotton fiber burns, the flame is yellow, there is a smell of burning paper, and the ash is grayish white; while T/C burns out a little hard ball; the black ball burned out by all-polyester is hard, and there is a lot of black smoke; the surface of T/R is a little white; the flame is blue when burning, with a special aromatic smell, and the ash is black and hard. But please note that this method may damage the clothes, and it is recommended to be carried out with the permission of the merchant.
In short, it takes a certain amount of experience to identify the composition of the fabric, and it is not difficult. As long as we master certain skills and methods and intentionally touch various fabrics when shopping in stores, we can easily identify the fabric composition of clothing over time. When buying clothes, we can choose the appropriate fabric composition according to our needs and preferences to create our own fashion style!