Glossary
Knitwear terms explained
Gauge, fully-fashioned, linking, micron, ply, pilling, teasel raising — the vocabulary you need to read a label and judge a sweater.
- Aran
- Heavily cabled, textured knitting from the Aran Islands off Ireland's west coast, traditionally in cream undyed wool. Luxury versions are hand- or machine-knitted in merino, cashmere or alpaca.
- Cut-and-sew
- Knitwear made by cutting garment pieces from a length of knitted fabric and overlocking the edges. Faster and cheaper than fully-fashioned knitting; seams are bulkier and the garment tends to lose shape over time.
- Dehairing
- The mechanical process of separating the fine cashmere down from the coarse guard hairs of the goat's outer coat. Thorough dehairing is expensive and is one of the biggest determinants of cashmere softness.
- Fair Isle
- Stranded colourwork originating on Fair Isle in Shetland, in which two colours per row are carried across the back, creating a warm double-thickness fabric with small repeating motifs.
- Fibre length (staple)
- The length of individual fibres in a yarn. Longer staple gives smoother, stronger yarn that resists pilling; it is as important as micron count in determining cashmere quality.
- Fully-fashioned
- A construction in which each panel of a garment is knitted to its exact shape, with visible fashioning marks where stitches are increased or decreased, and then linked together. It uses less yarn and produces a garment that keeps its shape, unlike cut-and-sew knitwear made from a roll of fabric.
- Gauge
- The number of needles per inch on a knitting machine, written as 'gg'. Low gauges (3–7 gg) produce chunky knits; 12 gg is the classic cashmere sweater; 24–30 gg is fine-gauge, used for merino and Sea Island cotton polo shirts. Higher gauge means finer yarn, more stitches and more skill required.
- Grade A cashmere
- The finest commercial cashmere grade: fibre diameter under about 15.5 microns and length of 34–36 mm or more. Grade B is around 16–19 µm; Grade C above 19 µm. Grades are industry conventions rather than a single regulated standard.
- Hand (handle)
- The tactile quality of a fabric — how it feels in the hand: soft, dry, full, silky, lofty. Finishing determines much of a knit's hand; 'Scottish hand' is fuller and 'Italian hand' smoother.
- Hand-framed
- Knitting on a manually operated flat-bed machine, with the operator pushing the carriage by hand. Slower than power knitting but allows fine control; still used by a few Scottish and Italian workshops for the highest-end pieces.
- Intarsia
- A colourwork technique in which separate blocks of colour are knitted with individual yarns, producing a single-thickness fabric with no floats on the back — the method behind argyle and pictorial knits.
- Linking
- Joining knitted panels stitch by stitch on a linking machine so the seam is flat and elastic. Hand-linking, in which a skilled operator places each stitch on the machine's points, is the mark of high-end fully-fashioned knitwear.
- Micron
- One thousandth of a millimetre; the unit used to measure fibre diameter. Finer fibre means softer knitwear: vicuña is 12–13 µm, Grade A cashmere under 15.5 µm, extra-fine merino under 18.5 µm, ordinary wool 25–35 µm.
- Pilling
- The formation of small balls of fibre on a knit's surface caused by loose fibre ends tangling under friction. Short-fibre yarns, loose knits and single-ply construction pill more; long-fibre 2-ply cashmere and worsted merino pill least.
- Ply
- The number of single yarns twisted together. 2-ply cashmere is stronger, more even and pills less than single-ply; heavier knits use 4-, 6- or 8-ply. Ply describes yarn structure, not thickness.
- Seamless (WHOLEGARMENT)
- Knitting an entire garment in one piece on a flat-bed machine, with no seams to link. Pioneered by Shima Seiki's WHOLEGARMENT system in 1995, it yields a comfortable, drapey garment with no seam bulk.
- Slow fashion
- An approach to clothing that favours small production runs, durable natural materials, fair labour and long garment life over seasonal volume. Many independent luxury knitwear houses describe themselves in these terms.
- Teasel raising
- A Scottish finishing technique in which the dried heads of the teasel plant gently brush the surface of washed cashmere to lift a soft nap without breaking fibres. It gives Scottish cashmere its characteristic full, downy hand.
- Vertical mill
- A manufacturer that controls every stage from raw fibre to finished garment — dehairing, dyeing, spinning, knitting and finishing — rather than buying in yarn. Johnstons of Elgin and several Mongolian and Peruvian producers are vertical mills.
- Worsted vs woollen spinning
- Worsted spinning combs fibres parallel to produce a smooth, strong, lustrous yarn (used for fine-gauge merino). Woollen spinning leaves fibres jumbled for a lofty, warm, softer yarn (used for cashmere and lambswool).