A Glimpse Inside My Book: Wear Comfort

This post is an adapted article from my book entitled “Discover the Relation between Fashion, Fabrics, Weather, and Comfort“. It is intended to give my readers a glimpse inside my book as a free sample. Furthermore, this post provides a brief summary of additional topics covered in the book, including protection from the elements, self-care, saving money, and creating a more suitable and sustainable wardrobe.

 

 

Disclosure: Self-promotion.

 

 

Definition of Thermal Comfort

According to surveys, most people associate thermal comfort with temperatures between 60 and 81F (15-28°C). At relative humidity between 35 and 60%, most people feel comfortable within 68 and 80.2F (20-27°C). Thermal comfort means that

• We experience no thermoregulatory responses, such as sweating, goosebumps, or shivering.
• Our only significant moisture losses occur thru the skin and breathing.
• Ambient air temperatures range between 64.4°F and 78.8°F (18 °C and 26°C), falling within the so-called thermal comfort zone.

 

Cold and Hot Stress Cause Discomfort, Health Issues, or Even Death Worldwide

Cold snaps, also known as cold waves or cold spells, are a substantial and rapid drop in temperature over 24 hours. They can cause significant increases in mortality in people 65 years or older from cardiovascular causes, especially strokes, coronary heart disease events, and respiratory causes in the subtropics, mid-, and high latitudes. In regions with warm winters, for instance, mortality from cardiovascular diseases increases as the temperature decreases. In Ireland, for instance, the cardiovascular disease mortality rate is 45% higher in December than in August, while it is only 28% higher in the much colder winters of Norway.

Heatwaves are an extended period (>4 days) of hot weather relative to the local historical records, with mean temperatures expected to persist over four days, which occurs once every 10 years.

This means different locations have different temperature thresholds for heatwaves due to their different historical records.

 

How Can You Recognize That You Suffer From Thermal Stress?

Signs of thermal heat stress include trouble sleeping and feeling tired, hot, or stressed, among others.

Actually, percentage-wise, cold weather causes more deaths than hot weather. The after-effects of exposure to cold weather, such as the cold, flu, and pneumonia, all contribute to the number of deaths. However, in absolute numbers, more deaths occur due to hot weather than cold weather because fewer people live in extremely cold regions.

Scientific studies revealed that both cold and heat stress of different severity can occur in all climate zones.

 

Can Clothing Help to Reduce Thermal Stress?

Yes. The thermal comfort of clothing depends on the fabric structure (i.e., knit or weave type, tightness), thickness, weight, material or material blends, color, and treatment (e.g., bleaching, stone washing, dying, impregnation). Thermal stress or comfort, on the other hand, depends on the weather conditions. Consequently, you must choose fabrics with physical properties that mitigate thermal stress under the given weather conditions.

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Obviously, weather conditions differ among the Earth’s 31 different bioclimatic zones. This means you need a different wardrobe in the Pacific-Northwest than when dressing for subtropical humid weather.

 

 

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How Does Fabric Mitigate or Avoid Thermal Stress?

Clothing can serve as insulation. This means it reduces the loss of your body heat to the colder environment. Unfortunately, not all fibers provide the same insulation. Furthermore, insulation also depends on fabric thickness and structure.

 

 

Because thermal stress levels vary with weather conditions, it is essential to have the right fabrics in your wardrobe for your specific climate region. Clothing with excessive insulation for the weather may lead to sweating, which can also cause discomfort. In cold weather, the sweat absorbed by cotton, for instance, can lead to zero insulation of the garment and even cooling by evaporation or freezing.

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In hot weather, fabric must be breathable so your sweat can be transported away as water vapor from your skin. Moisture-wicking fabric increases the evaporation.

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Unfortunately, a desirable fabric property can often harm another desirable property. Consequently, designing and building a weather-appropriate wardrobe often requires compromises.

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However, some weather conditions exist for which you can’t achieve thermal comfort for an undefined length of time. Even layering of clothes for thermal comfort can only do so much. This means the clothing only prolongs the time you feel comfortable. When you live in such a climate region, you have to become a master at layering in winter.

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Consequently, you need to know which fabric textures and fibers, or fiber blends, are best suited for insulation in your climate zone’s specific weather conditions.

You will find these information for your climate zone in the book.

 

 

What Are the Physical Properties the Fabrics Need to Have for Wear Comfort?

Of course, the required properties differ depending on the climate region, the actual weather, and your activities. There is only room for some examples in this blog post. However, the book contains many more examples.

For warm, clear-sky weather and an active outdoor lifestyle during summer, fabrics should possess strength, durability, natural UV protection, as well as high breathability, sweat absorptivity, and overall moisture management capability, such as hemp fabric.

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On the contrary, humid weather with temperatures just above the freezing point requires fabrics with high moisture regain, porosity, and low thermal conductivity, such as wool. Here

• Thermal conductivity is a measure of the insulation that a fabric provides. The higher the thermal conductivity, the lower the insulation.
• Moisture regain refers to the amount of moisture that the dry fiber would absorb from the air at 70F (21.1^oC) and 65% relative humidity. The higher the moisture regain, the longer the fabric feels dry.
• Porosity gives the fraction of the fabric that are pores.

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Note: Blends of different natural, synthetic and/or regenerated fibers) can modify each other’s physical properties.

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Furthermore, for fabrics consisting of blended fibers, the blend ratio plays a huge role. High cotton content in a cotton-wool blend fabric, for instance, is great for professional clothes in warm climate winters and cold climate summers because wool is wrinkle-resistant. … High wool content in a cotton-wool blend provides sufficient insulation in climates with cool winters at temperatures down to slightly below the freezing point.

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Why Does Fabric Structure Impact Wear Comfort?

The structural properties of the fabric influence, among other things, moisture transport, the UV-protection factor (UPF), and insulation. The fabric structure influences the porosity, and hence the fabric density, coverage of the skin, and consequently, the UPF and insulation provided by the fabric.

 

 

In knitwear, for instance, air permeability and relative water-vapor permeability increase with increasing stitch length. Therefore, water-vapor permeability is higher for loose than tight knits. For woven fabrics, these properties are yarn and fiber type, yarn count, number of yarn folds, weft density, weave patterns (as well as fabric treatment and blend ratio, if applicable).

 

 

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Does Color Play a Role in Wear Comfort?

Yes. Color plays preventing sunburns. Furthermore, the type of dye can affect the softness of clothes. Not to mention that color also affects your thermal comfort in various ways depending on solar radiation and air temperature.

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Recall: Wearing white in summer has other reasons than thermal comfort.

 

 

Who Should Read “Discover the Relation between Fashion, Fabrics, Weather, and Comfort”

This book is for everyone interested and/or engaged in the fields of textiles, fashion, fashion design, thermal and/or wear comfort, and/or weather, especially technologists of the textile industry, apparel salespersons, retailer buyers, merchandisers and managers, stylists, fashion and textile designers, fashion editors-in-chief, fashion journalists and bloggers, meteorologists, bioclimatologists, engineers, high school students interested in the STEM field, and fashion-loving laypersons.

All explanations and examples are at a level that everyone with a high school degree should be able to understand. Consequently, the book can also serve as a textbook for a 100-level science class for non-science majors, particularly for those in fashion design and fashion business, in community colleges, technical schools, and universities.

The book is a Must-have for everyone who cares about the environment and/or strives to build a sustainable wardrobe.

 

 

How Will “Discover the Relation between Fashion, Fabrics, Weather, and Comfort” Benefit You?

After reading this book, you can judge the thermal comfort of garments when reading the clothes tags. Consequently, you can build a weather-appropriate wardrobe that suits your personal style and dressing needs. Buy the book now to:

• Build a capsule wardrobe that protects you from the elements in the environment you live.
• Avoid buying clothes pieces you never (can) wear.
• Save money with a minimalist wardrobe that suits the weather of your climate region.
• Dress for thermal comfort.
• Reduce your (thermal) stress by wearing clothes in the best fabric for the weather in your climate region. Avoiding stress is a matter of selfcare.
• Pack the clothes that are best for your vacation destination.

 

 

Conclusions on the Relation between Fabric, Weather, and Comfort

Dressing weather-appropriately not only requires checking the forecasts and looking out of the window.

On the contrary, it requires creating a wardrobe that is weather-appropriate for your climate region. Doing so requires understanding the range of its typical weather and its local modifications by lakes, distance to the ocean, mountains, and valleys, as well as altitude.

By no means can you achieve thermal comfort by dressing for the average climate of the day, given the high variability of the weather.

Tip: The best $17.99 you can spend today is to buy my book. The price will increase to $19.75 on June 13.

 

 

Photo of me: G. Kramm

 

References

Beck, H.E., N.E. Zimmermann, T.R. McVicar, N. Vergopolan, A. Berg, E.F. Wood, 2018. Present and Future Köppen-Geiger Climate Classification Maps at 1-Km Resolution. Scientific Data, 5, 180214.

Mölders, N., 2023. Discover the Relation between Fashion Fabrics, Weather, and Comfort. Amazon Publishing Pros.

© 2013-2025 Nicole Mölders | All rights reserved