Innovative Tapeless Zipper Saves Tons Of Fabric While Creating A Better Fit On Your Clothes

Innovative Tapeless Zipper Saves Tons Of Fabric While Creating A Better Fit On Your Clothes

For a company that makes half the world’s zippers, new ideas have big impacts.

At Japan’s YKK, they’ve debuted a zipper sans fabric tape—the typically black-colored strip of material that separates the back of the zipper teeth from the garment.

Early adopters include Prada and North Face, and the reception is positive—with users testifying to flexibility, lighter weight, a more unifying design, and a better, more natural fit. The secret behind AiryString® is that zipper teeth are actually more bendy and twisty than the fabric tape they attach to, and that if you attach them directly to the garment, these properties are conferred to it.

But how can a zipper attach directly to fabric?

Don’t worry, all your questions can be answered in the pair of videos below. But for now, have a read about the impressive potential this upgraded zipper can bring the world.

The beforementioned YKK has an unusual level of market dominance. It owns not only patents and/or trademarks on its finished products in 180 countries, but also on a suite of sewing machines that the company manufactures itself. In addition to this, it designs and makes its own molds for zippers, and even spins its own thread.

With so much supply chain security, YKK can afford to innovate in a way that others can’t. In fact, one could be applauded for pointing out that YKK is as much if not more of a monopoly than Standard Oil ever was.

Since the modern zipper’s debut in 1910, there’s been little need for innovation. Textile and garment fabrication, however, rarely rests, and today brands wield “smart fabrics” featherweight nylon blends, and other extremely innovative fabrics that have left the zipper, in the words of Wired Magazine writer Amy Francombe, “out of sync with what surrounds it.”

It’s ironic to think of a zipper being out of sync, but indeed the stiff stitching along the tape-teeth seam makes for a less-flexible bind than do the newly redesigned teeth on the AiryString.

Without that tape though, YKK had to redesign everything. New machinery had to be developed to sew and close the garment. The resulting tapeless zipper seems impossible, but it’s anything but.

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The sewing room floor has benefited by the change, as has the planet. Thousands of yards of fabric tape scraps are generated during zipper production, as well as gallons of water used with dye to color the tape—all of which have been removed. Add in shorter labor hours, and the result is a more efficient, eco-friendly product.

It’s attached to the garment via a sewing machine that feeds each half of the zipper along two gears made of the same zipper teeth as the AiryString.

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YKK representatives told Francombe that adoption will take time, as the machines are not readily available, even if the zipper can fit into regular workflows. This has limited it to high-end brands, but if it proves popular, there’s virtually no limit to its future.

Personally, GNN would like to hear from users about whether the new teeth are easier to unjam in situations where the garment’s fabric gets stuck between them.

WATCH how it works below…