Pattern engineering and functional clothing

Abstract

Garments conventionally address the protective, social and aesthetic needs of individuals but they can also be engineered to carry out a range of specific functions. Besides incorporating the features to meet the specific demands of a particular function, the garment must meet the basic requirements of protection and comfort. Pattern engineering for functional clothing involves applying technical, scientific and mathematical knowledge of patterns to modify and develop patterns with the objective of developing a garment which meets the function specific requirements, is comfortable to wear and contributes to maximize the efficiency and performance of the wearer. This paper explores, through examples, use of pattern engineering for functional garments to achieve these stated objectives. It establishes pattern engineering as the first step of planning a purposeful, efficient and aesthetic functional garment. It shows how the techniques of pattern engineering can be used to find solutions to challenges posed by the anthropometry of the human body and how these techniques are used to generate the blueprint of a functional garment incorporating all functional and aesthetic components.