Apparel Manufacturing Glossary: 60 Terms Explained

Apparel manufacturing runs on a vocabulary nobody teaches you. A factory says "send me the lab dip approval and we'll seal the sample", and a new brand nods rather than asking — which is how a specification ends up agreed by two parties who meant different things.

Here is the working vocabulary, grouped by where in the process you meet each term. Nothing here is jargon for its own sake; every one of these appears in a real quote, tech pack or inspection report.

Development and specification

• Tech pack — the document that instructs the factory: sketches, construction callouts, fabric, colours, measurements, trims, labels and packing. It is also the document you argue from when a sample comes back wrong.
• Block — a base pattern for a garment type and body shape, from which specific styles are developed. A good block is a genuine asset; it takes several sample rounds to arrive at.
• Grading — scaling a base-size pattern up and down to produce a full size run. Not a simple percentage: different measurements grow at different rates.
• Points of measure (POM) — the named places a garment is measured, shown on a diagram. "Sleeve length" means three different things without a POM diagram.
• Tolerance — the acceptable variation on each measurement. No garment is made to the millimetre, and a tolerance written down is one you can hold a factory to.
• Rise — on trousers, the distance from crotch seam to waistband, front and back stated separately. The measurement customers cannot name but return garments over.
• Articulation — shaping a knee or elbow in the bent position so the garment does not pull tight when the joint moves.
• Gusset — an extra panel, usually diamond-shaped, set into a stress point such as a crotch or underarm to add movement and take load off a seam intersection.

Fabric

• GSM — grams per square metre. How much the fabric weighs, and nothing more. Two fabrics at the same GSM can behave completely differently depending on construction.
• Denier / D — a yarn thickness measure, as in 600D. Higher is thicker and generally tougher.
• T count — thread density in a woven fabric, as in 300T. Higher is denser and usually more wind-resistant.
• Ripstop — a weave with reinforcing threads cross-hatched at intervals so a snag stops instead of running into a tear.
• Membrane — a laminated layer behind the face fabric that stops water under pressure. This, not the finish, is what makes a garment waterproof.
• DWR — durable water repellent. A surface finish that makes water bead. It is not waterproofing, it wears off, and reproofing belongs on the care label.
• Hydrostatic head — the waterproof rating in millimetres, measured under ISO 811: the height of a water column the fabric holds before leaking.
• French terry / fleece back — on a sweatshirt knit, whether the interior loops are left uncut (terry, lighter and more breathable) or cut and brushed (fleece, warmer and softer).
• Pique — a textured knit used for polos. Holds structure and hides creasing better than smooth jersey.
• Interlining — a hidden layer fused or sewn inside a collar, placket or cuff to give it body.
• Bonded / laminated — two or more fabric layers joined into one, as in a softshell face bonded to a microfleece back.

Colour

• Lab dip — a small swatch of your actual fabric dyed to your target colour, sent for approval before bulk dyeing. Approve it physically in daylight, never from a screen.
• Strike-off — the print equivalent: a printed sample of the fabric so you can approve colour and pattern scale before any garment is made.
• Dye lot — one batch of fabric dyed together. Two lots of the same colour differ slightly, which is why a tracksuit top and bottom must come from the same lot.
• Pantone / TCX — the colour reference system. TCX is the textile version; quoting a plain Pantone number from a printed swatch book can produce a different result on cloth.
• Delta-E — a numeric measure of how far a colour is from its target. Under 2.0 is closer than the eye distinguishes side by side.
• Colourfastness — how well colour survives washing, rubbing, light or perspiration. Tested separately for each, commonly under AATCC methods.
• Metamerism — when two colours match under one light source and not another. The reason shade approval happens under standardised lighting.

Cutting and production

• Marker — the cutting layout that arranges all pattern pieces on the fabric. Its efficiency decides how much fabric a garment consumes and therefore what it costs.
• Consumption — how much fabric one garment uses, at a stated fabric width. The number that decides whether supplying your own fabric actually saves money.
• Lay / spreading — stacking many fabric plies on the cutting table so a whole batch is cut at once.
• Bar-tack — a dense short stitch used to reinforce a stress point: pocket corners, belt loops, the base of a zip. Their absence is where cheap garments fail.
• Seam sealing / taping — heat-applied tape over seams so water cannot enter through the stitch holes. A membrane without taped seams is not a waterproof garment.
• Overlock / coverstitch — edge-finishing and hemming stitches typical of knitwear.
• Walking foot — a heavy machine that feeds multiple thick layers evenly. Bag and pack construction needs it; standard apparel machines do not have it.

Decoration

• Screen printing — ink pushed through a stencil, one screen per colour. Best cost at volume, limited to spot colours.
• Sublimation — dye converted to gas under heat, bonding into polyester fibre. Edge to edge, no hand-feel, permanent — but polyester only, on a light base.
• DTF — direct to film. Full colour and fine detail at low quantities, on almost any fibre.
• Digitising — converting artwork into the stitch file an embroidery machine reads. A one-off cost per logo per size.
• Puff print — an ink that expands under heat for a raised effect.
• Woven label vs printed label — woven is fabric with the design woven in and reads as premium; printed is ink on tape and is cheaper.

Quality and inspection

• Sealed sample — the approved garment, signed and dated, held as the reference every production check is measured against. One copy at the factory, one with you.
• PP sample — pre-production sample, made on the actual production line with actual bulk fabric, as a final check before the run.
• AQL — acceptable quality limit. The statistical sampling standard used in final inspection, defining how many defects in a sampled quantity make a shipment pass or fail.
• In-line inspection — checking during stitching rather than only at the end, so a fault is caught while it is still ten garments and not five hundred.
• Shade band — the accepted range of shade variation across a production run.

Commercial and shipping

• MOQ — minimum order quantity, normally per style per colourway rather than per order.
• OEM — you bring the design, the factory sources everything and produces it under your label.
• ODM — the factory offers an existing design that you brand as your own.
• CMT — cut, make, trim. You supply the fabric; the factory builds the garment for a make charge.
• Nominated fabric — you specify the exact mill and quality, the factory buys and holds it. The middle ground between OEM and CMT.
• Landed cost — the true cost per piece with freight, duty, tax, brokerage and inland delivery included. The only number worth comparing between quotes.
• Incoterms — the three-letter terms (EXW, FOB, CIF, DDP) that decide who pays for each leg and who carries the risk.
• Size curve — how quantity is split across sizes. Buying it evenly is how brands end up holding the ends of the range.
• Carryover — a style repeated season to season, as opposed to a seasonal one-shot.

Where these terms lead

Most of the expensive mistakes in this trade come from one of these words meaning something slightly different to each side. If a term in a quote or a tech pack is doing real work — a tolerance, an Incoterm, a fabric weight, an AQL level — write down what you understand it to mean and confirm it, rather than assuming.

The pages that go deeper on the big ones: fabric families and what each is good at, the twelve sections of a tech pack, how to approve a sample properly, and what each Incoterm actually covers.