Word: fabrics
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...first stretch fabric, of course, was skin. It fit fairly well, withstood wear and tear (scuff marks, lipstick traces, even wine stains vanished in a jiffy), but wrinkled like crazy: a knee bend, for example, caused the stuff to stretch 45%, a shoulder shrug, 16%. After as little as 30 bending, shrugging years, shape was sure to go. Fortunately, skilled technicians got to work on the problem, finally turned up with an ANo. 1 solution called polyurethane elastomeric yarn (spandex) that stretches like skin, leaves no telltale bags or sags, and springs back into good-as-new condition without benefit...
...Giant Step. In theory, stretch fabrics have been around since 1947, when the discovery of vertically stretchable textured yarn hit the slopes, making ski pants a stylish as well as a sturdy business. Chemical processes like slack mercerizing (by which the fabric, not the raw fiber, is made resilient after it is woven) left cottons and wools horizontally stretchable, did wonders for men's oxford shirts. Spandex, a wholly elastic fiber produced by Du Pont in 1958, revitalized bathing suits, hosiery and undergarments. But the big breakthrough came only last spring, when Du Pont went one giant step farther...
...result: a versatile, sure-fire way to convert every conventionally rigid fabric in the world into stuff that stretched up and down, back and forth, to and fro, and never once ran out of breadth. Accordingly, a whole new galaxy of stretch fabric appeared, all developed around a spandex core, ranging from brocade to burlap, taffeta to twill. Not all of them cling to the skin, but the stretch qualities let them give when and where they have...
...physical proportions. Kennedy's stand-in had a chalk-marked circle on the back of his suit jacket just at the point where the assassin's first bullet struck the President; Connally's double wore the actual jacket the Governor had worn on Nov. 22, and its torn fabric still showed a bullet hole. From its assassin's eye view, the camera first showed the line of sight between the window and the car obscured by an oak tree (the Warren Commission was careful to note that the amount of foliage on the tree was about the same...
Died. Fred Cole, 63, California swimsuit designer who in the 1920s broke away from the drab, all-covering "woollies" of the day with low-backed, rainbow-colored bathing suits, went on to pioneer, with curve-clinging Lastex fabric, the bare midriff and the two-piece suit, but never countenanced the bikini; of cancer; in Los Angeles...