Material Study: Japanese Loopwheel Cotton

A modern circular knitting machine produces dozens of metres of fabric an hour. A loopwheel machine produces roughly one. There are fewer than a few hundred left in operation, almost all of them in a single prefecture in Japan.

We use them anyway, because the fabric they make cannot be made any other way.

Loopwheelers knit with the fabric hanging under its own weight, at almost no tension. The yarn is never stretched, so the finished fleece is denser, loftier, and far more resilient — it returns to shape rather than sagging out of it.

The trade-off is time. A single roll for the Eclipse takes the better part of a day. We think it is worth it. So, judging by how the hoodie wears in, do the people who own one.