LYCRA Brand (INVISTA) - Fashion Company Profile
LYCRA is the original elastane fiber brand - invented at DuPont in 1958, the trademarked name for the stretch fiber generically called spandex or elastane - and since 2019 a brand of The LYCRA Company of Wilmington, Delaware, which emerged from Chapter 11 restructuring in May 2026.
Company Snapshot
- Status
- Operating - the elastane (spandex) fiber brand of The LYCRA Company, which emerged from a prepackaged Chapter 11 restructuring on May 20, 2026, eliminating more than $1.2 billion of long-term debt, and continues to operate
- Type
- Brand of The LYCRA Company, headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware, United States; the company was owned by a Shandong Ruyi affiliate from 2019 until its lenders gained full equity control in 2022
- Headquarters
- Wilmington, Delaware, United States (the brand owner's headquarters)
- Founded
- 1958, at DuPont, where chemist Joseph C. Shivers invented the elastane fiber first called Fiber K and then sold as LYCRA fiber
Company Profile
An ingredient fiber brand carries no shop box: LYCRA fiber is licensed and sold to mills and brands, and garments containing it are sold by those brands, not by the brand owner. The technical record - the spandex and elastane terminology, the family of differentiated fibers, the patent position of its period and LYCRA COOLING technology - is kept in full on the history page.
The range of garments that follows from that one ingredient is deliberately exhaustive: today there is a versatile range of LYCRA fibers inside everything from cycling apparel to swimwear, denim to hosiery, sneakers to suits, haute couture to socks. The closing application list adds the commercial categories - athleisure, activewear, lingerie, hosiery, underwear, socks, performance swimwear, fashion swimwear, denim and ready-to-wear - all of it described here, as throughout this section, strictly in fiber and fabric terms: what the elastane does for fit, shape retention and durability in each garment type. The parent INVISTA filing beside this page carries the corporate picture; the COOLMAX filing carries the moisture-management counterpart, and the two technologies are often partners inside the same performance garment.
LYCRA Brand History
The earlier record for this company - its history, past brand line-ups, figures and photographs from the periods described - is kept on a separate page for historical reference.
LYCRA Brand History & Historical Profile →Common Questions
Who owns the LYCRA brand now?
The LYCRA Company, headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware. It acquired the brand as part of INVISTA's apparel textiles business in 2019; its lenders gained full equity control in 2022, and the company emerged from a prepackaged Chapter 11 restructuring in May 2026.
What is the difference between LYCRA, spandex and elastane?
LYCRA fiber is the trademarked brand name of a class of synthetic elastic fibers called spandex in the United States and elastane in the rest of the world; spandex and elastane mean the same thing, but LYCRA is a trademark of The LYCRA Company.
When was LYCRA fiber invented?
In 1958, at DuPont, by chemist Joseph C. Shivers; it was the historical record spandex and elastane fiber.
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References & Further Reading
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