Fashion Terms — the Apparel Search fashion terminology directory
This section contains concepts and terms that are of interest to members of the apparel industry, fashion industry or textile industry. The goal of this area is to provide information formatted around key topics of interest to the industry in which we work, as well as to the ultimate consumer of fashion products. On this page, you will find areas of interest that begin with the letter “K”. The K terms are a compact set of three: a leather topic in kip leather, a garment-construction topic in knitted garments, and a design-and-law topic in knockoffs.
This section contains concepts and terms that we feel are of interest to members of the apparel industry, fashion industry or textile industry.
The goal of this area is to provide you with information that is formatted around key topics of interest to the industry in which we work as well as ultimate consumer of fashion products.
On this page, you will find areas of interest that begin with the letter "K".
The three K entries cover materials, construction and design practice. Kip leather is the leather made from the untanned hide of a young or small animal such as a calf, lamb or young goat; kip leather from younger cattle is softer and lighter than other cowhide, easier to break in, and used for high-end gloves, baseball gloves, shoes, handbags and purses. Knitted garments are clothing made from fabric built by interlocking loops of yarn — a construction that gives flexibility, softness and natural stretch, and that covers everything from sweaters, cardigans, socks, hats and scarves to dresses, leggings, undergarments and activewear, in fibers from cotton and wool to cashmere, alpaca, silk, bamboo and nylon.
Knockoffs raise a different kind of question. Replicas made to deceive a buyer into thinking a product came from a brand that did not make it are illegal knockoffs. Copycat designing is a grayer area: designers are influenced by what they see in magazines, stores and on the street, a concept can be copied accidentally as a color, fabric or silhouette spreads through the market, and knockoffs also play a role in how trends disseminate and feed demand. Readers can move from any one of these topics to its neighbors through the list at the top of this page, or browse the other letters of the directory through the letter bar below.
Start with the term list directly under the introduction — those three links are the whole K section, each exactly one click away. Readers looking for a topic rather than a letter can use Fashion Terms by Category, which groups terms around subjects, and the full Fashion Terms Directory for the complete A to Z listing across both directory pages. Terms that start with a number have their own directory page as well, linked from the letter bar.
The K section of the directory covers kip leather, knitted garments and knockoffs — each linked from the term list on this page.
Every K term has its own page with a definition and explanation written for the apparel, fashion and textile industries. The list on this page links to each of them, and the Fashion Terms Directory links onward to the other letter directories.
The terms are written for members of the apparel, fashion and textile industries and for consumers of fashion products who want a plain explanation of an industry concept.