Apparel Companies I

Welcome to the I section of the Apparel Search Fashion Company Names directory. The chip grid below is this letter's table of contents: 7 company profiles, one chip each, in alphabetical order. It is a short letter with an unusually wide spread of business types. A brand-licensing house that owns names rather than factories stands beside the world's archetypal fast-fashion retailer; a Dusseldorf trade-fair organiser and a global apparel federation represent the industry's institutions; and a single fiber company accounts for three of the seven filings, because its two ingredient brands - COOLMAX for cooling and moisture, LYCRA for stretch and shape - are directory subjects in their own right. Every profile here carries its editorial links, photographs and facts in full.

Two reading notes belong on this hub. First, the INVISTA trio must not be read as three copies of one page: the INVISTA profile is the parent - intermediates, polymers, the Apparel & Advanced Textiles business and the IPT licensing group - while the COOLMAX page is a technology record (performance levels, fiber cross-sections, hangtag certification since 1986) and the LYCRA page is a terminology and fit record (spandex versus elastane, over 200 differentiated fibers, cooling constructions). Second, the Igedo profile is a period record: its exhibitor counts and brand lists describe the fairs' late-2000s stagings, with the July 2007 and February 2008 events named in the filing, and they are kept with those dates attached rather than silently updated.

Reading the I Profiles: Names, Stores, Fairs and Fibers

Names and stores come first. Iconix Brand Group manages and licenses a portfolio that runs from Candie's and London Fog to Starter, Rocawear and Peanuts - over 1,100 licenses with retailers and manufacturers, in the filing's count - while Inditex does almost the opposite, designing, making, distributing and selling in its own stores: a 1963 Galician workshop, the first Zara in 1975, and over 6,900 stores across eight retail concepts as recorded. Institutions frame the trade both companies do: the Igedo fairs in Dusseldorf, where CPD, HMD, Body Look and Global Fashion stage the order-writing and sourcing season, and the International Apparel Federation, whose mission of building bridges across continents links national solutions into international ones.

Fibers close the letter, because so much of modern clothing is decided before a garment is designed. INVISTA's fibers go into swimwear, denim, intimate apparel, activewear, socks and outerwear; COOLMAX technology moves moisture so the wearer stays cool and dry, in versions from everyday CORE to the propeller-yarn AIR construction; and LYCRA fiber - the trademarked name the page is careful to distinguish from generic spandex and elastane - supplies the fit, shape and comfort that lasts in everything from cycling apparel to suits. If you know of an important fashion company beginning with I that is not listed here, you are welcome to make suggestions, as the page hub invited - and the routes on this page lead onward to fashion jobs and fashion news, just as the page offered them.

A final note on how to cite this letter. Several I filings are snapshots with the period built into the fact itself: Igedo's exhibitor counts belong to the fairs' 2007 and 2008 stagings, Inditex's store and workforce figures and Iconix's license count belong to their profiles' own filing periods, and the LYCRA page's 'nearly sixty years' is the brand's phrasing at the time it was recorded. Each profile keeps its period attached to its numbers, so a researcher quoting any figure from this letter should quote the period with it - that habit is what keeps a directory honest as it ages.