Knitting a High-Tech Summer: Toscano Yarns S/S 14

Pitti Filati number 72 took place this past week, opening on Wednesday 23rd January and closing just two days ago, on Friday. So, as usual, in the next posts we will hopefully be exploring in-depth the world of yarns and the new knitwear trends for the Spring/Summer 2014 season.

Since quite a few recent posts on this site focused on innovative techniques such as bonding and thermowelding, we are going to start the reports with yarns that have some kind of technological connection designed by Prato-based Toscano – a company specialised in the production of yarns for both knitting machines and hand-made creations.

The first two yarns we are going to look at are the Vibuko (100% Viscose) and the Kolbuko (100% Cotton) yarns. Both are treated with Vinavil glue and then washed (that's why the final composition is 65% Viscose; 35% Vinavil and 72% Cotton; 28% Vinavil).

Vinavil is an adhesive for porous materials, such as paper, wood, cork, fabric, leather or rigid plastic materials and once applied to the yarn it eats it away, this means that once it's employed to make a knitwear design it creates looser stitches and holes as shown by the swatches. While this is not a strictly technological yarn, I quite like the idea of “ruining” the yarn with glue and then creating with the damaged parts holes and loser chains.

There are two high-tech yarns in the S/S 14 collection and both employ fibres blended with polyurethanw: Tecnogomma (70% Polyester and 30% Polyurethane) and Tecnolino (84% Linen and 16% Polyurethane or 88% Linen and 12% Polyurethane). Both the yarns have a rubbery consistency and are ultra-resistant while they are still pleasant to the touch and would be ideal to create chain mail effects.

Polyurethane offers the elasticity of rubber combined with the toughness and durability of metal, it is resistant to abrasions, oil, solvents, fats, greases, gasoline, tears and weather, so these yarns could have many benefits, from weight reduction and wear improvements to high flexibility.

Polyurethane has also got excellent electrical insulating properties and it's heat and cold resistant, so this yarn could be applied to create garments ideal for specific disciplines (including extreme sports?) while it would also be interesting to see it mixed with noble or natural fibres in a dress or a jumper.

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Add to Technorati Favorites