|
About This Author
Come closer.
|
Carrion Luggage #1101280 added November 10, 2025 at 10:54am
Restrictions: None
Zip Drive
If there are any articles I really should stay away from, it would be fashion articles. And yet, this one from Wired got stuck in my pile:
I would never have known of YKK's existence were it not for those letters being on zipper pulls.
For more than a century, the zipper has stayed more or less the same: two interlocking rows of teeth, a sliding pull, and the fabric tape that holds it together.
And it's a marvel of engineering... until it stops working, at which point it becomes a source of extreme frustration.
Their new AiryString zipper looks ordinary at first glance. Then you realize what’s missing: there’s no tape.
There are, of course, pictures at the linked article.
It’s a small but important redesign that feels almost futuristic in its simplicity, a fastening system that sinks into a garment instead of sitting on top of it.
I, well, don't see how that could possibly be the case. Not even with the pictures.
“We wanted to address the challenges involved in zipper sewing,” says Makoto Nishizaki, vice president of YKK’s Application Development Division. The idea grew out of a collaboration with JUKI Corporation, a leader in industrial sewing machines. Together, the two companies reconsidered how a zipper could be made and how it could merge more seamlessly with fabric.
This may be the first time I've seen the adjective "seamlessly" used in a literal, non-metaphorical, sense. So there's that.
The zipper, as we know it, hasn’t had a real overhaul since the 1910s. Its long reign owes much to reliability—it’s sturdy, inexpensive, and easy to sew.
YKK apparently doesn't believe in the adage "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Designers now work with featherlight nylons, stretch fabrics, and technical blends that behave more like skin than cloth. The old zipper, with its woven borders and stiff seams, has started to feel out of sync with what surrounds it.
I hadn't noticed.
The teeth were redesigned, the manufacturing process rewritten, and new machinery developed to attach the closure to garments.
That was my question, coming as I do from a place where function is more important than form: without the cloth strips, how in the hell does the zipper get attached to the garment? And the article doesn't go into enough detail about that. Perhaps it's a proprietary thing; I don't know.
When asked what zippers might look like in 50 years, Nishizaki doesn’t talk about smart fabrics or AI-assisted closures. He returns to YKK’s mantra: “Little parts. Big difference.”
Gotta say, though: most of what I see purporting to be "innovation" (especially from Wired) is all about adding failure points, not subtracting them. When I first looked at the article, I fully expected it to be about some robotic clothing fastener that requires an app to configure and control.
This is why I'm a pessimist: I can only be pleasantly surprised.
Still wondering how the hell this is easier to attach to garments, but that's not my problem. |
© Copyright 2025 Robert Waltz (UN: cathartes02 at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
Robert Waltz has granted InkSpot.Com, its affiliates and its syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work. |
