Reference
Glossary
Twenty-four terms, most of them lifted straight off the listings in this catalog. Where a word describes a construction rather than a material, that is said. Where this catalog carries nothing of the kind at all, that is said too.
- Layer
- One garment worn at one position in a stack. Every layer on this site is read as filling exactly one slot, which is why a hooded shirt and a fleece hoodie can occupy the same position and do entirely different work in it.
See also: Shell, Mid layer, Base layer
- Base layer
- The garment worn closest to the skin, chosen for how it handles moisture rather than for how it looks. This catalog does not carry one. Nothing in these listings is described as a base layer, and this site does not promote a shirt into the role.
See also: Layer, Mid layer, Insulation
- Mid layer
- Anything worn between the base and the outermost layer. On this site the knit slot and the sweatshirt slot are both mid layers, and they are kept separate because one opens at the front and the other often does not.
See also: Layer, Base layer, Shell
- Shell
- The outermost garment in a stack, chosen for what it does about weather rather than for warmth. In this catalog the shells are the rain listings, and every one of them is silent about warmth.
See also: Layer, Waterproof, Seam tape
- Insulation
- A layer whose job is to hold air and slow the loss of heat: down, synthetic fill, or a thick lofted fabric made for the purpose. This catalog does not carry one. Not one of these listings describes fill of any kind, and this site never treats a second knit as a substitute for it.
See also: Base layer, Lining, Unlined
- Unlined
- Built from a single layer of fabric with no second layer sewn inside it. One rain listing in this catalog uses the word about itself, which is unusually direct: it tells you where warmth is not going to come from.
See also: Lining, Shell, Insulation
- Lining
- A second layer of fabric attached inside a garment. A lining changes how a garment feels and how it slides over what is under it. It is not the same thing as fill, and a listing that states a lining has not stated warmth.
See also: Unlined, Insulation, Shell
- Seam tape
- A strip bonded over the inside of a stitched seam so that water cannot pass through the needle holes. Seams are the ordinary route into a shell, which is why the presence or absence of this wording matters more than the adjective on the front of the listing.
See also: Waterproof, Shell, Hydrostatic head
- Hydrostatic head
- A laboratory measurement of the water pressure a fabric holds before water passes through, expressed as a height of water in millimeters. It describes cloth under controlled conditions and not a finished garment. One listing in this catalog prints such a figure and does not name the method that produced it.
See also: Waterproof, Water-resistant, Seam tape
- Waterproof
- A seller word meaning that water is not expected to pass through. This site did not find a published United States rule fixing what the word must mean on clothing, so it reads the word as a claim and looks for the seams and the figure behind it instead.
See also: Water-resistant, Seam tape, Hydrostatic head
- Water-resistant
- The narrower cousin of the word above: some water, some of the time. No listing in this catalog uses it, which is worth noting, because every rain listing here reaches for the stronger word instead.
See also: Waterproof, DWR, Shell
- Breathable
- A seller word for a fabric that lets water vapor pass outward. There are published laboratory methods for parts of this property, and no listing in this catalog names one. Read on its own the word carries no figure and no threshold.
See also: DWR, Waterproof, Shell
- DWR
- Short for durable water repellent: a finish applied to the outer face of a fabric so that water beads and runs off instead of soaking in. It is a surface treatment rather than a barrier, and no listing in this catalog mentions it at all.
See also: Water-resistant, Waterproof, Shell
- UPF
- Ultraviolet Protection Factor: a rating of how much ultraviolet radiation passes through a fabric, produced by a published laboratory test method and governed, where it is labeled, by a published specification. It is a property of cloth. This site records the figure a listing prints and says nothing further.
- UV
- Ultraviolet radiation: the band of the spectrum just beyond visible violet light. The rating above is a measurement of how much of that band a fabric transmits in a laboratory. Both terms describe measurements of cloth on this site and nothing else.
See also: UPF
- Satin
- A weave, not a fiber. Satin is a way of interlacing threads so that long floats sit on the surface, which is what produces the smooth, reflective face. Cloth woven this way can be made from many different materials, and a satin label states nothing about content.
See also: Silk, Wool blend, Chiffon
- Silk
- A natural fiber, spun by insect larvae and reeled from the cocoon. It is a material rather than a construction, which is exactly why the two words are so easy to confuse on a listing. On this site the word appears only inside a quoted listing title, and never as a statement of what a garment is made of.
See also: Satin, Wool blend
- Wool blend
- A phrase meaning that wool is present alongside something else, in an unstated proportion. Two knit listings in this catalog use it, and neither prints a percentage. It names a direction rather than a content.
- Gauze
- An open, loosely woven cloth in which the threads are spaced far enough apart to leave visible gaps. It names a construction, and one shirt listing here uses it alongside two other material words that do not fully agree with each other.
- Chiffon
- A light, sheer cloth with a slightly rough surface, produced by twisting the yarns hard before weaving. Like the terms above it describes how the cloth was made rather than what it was made from.
- Pilling
- Small balls of tangled fiber that form on a fabric surface with wear. One knit listing here prints an anti-pilling claim, which is a statement about how the surface is expected to behave over time and arrives with no method and no scale.
See also: Wool blend, Layer
- Drawstring
- A cord threaded through a channel so that an opening can be pulled tighter. One hooded listing in this catalog states one, which makes it the only adjustment stated anywhere in that category.
See also: Kangaroo pocket, Layer
- Kangaroo pocket
- A single pouch across the front of a garment, open at both sides. It is the pocket most hooded sweatshirts have, and one listing here names it specifically while the others simply say pockets.
See also: Drawstring, Mid layer