US3021845A

US3021845A - Body supporting garments

Info

Publication number: US3021845A
Application number: US810385A
Authority: US
Inventors: Raymond H Smith
Original assignee: LA RESISTA CORSET CO
Current assignee: LA RESISTA CORSET CO
Priority date: 1959-05-01
Filing date: 1959-05-01
Publication date: 1962-02-20
Anticipated expiration: 1979-02-20

Description

Feb. 20, 1962 R. H. SMITH BODY SUPPORTING GARMENTS Filed May l, 1959 D. .1.11. ..\...\.,.b. ...1.1. rit.

INVENTOR. RAYMND H. SMITH ilnited tates Patent 3,021,845 BODY SUPEGRTENG GARMENTS Raymond H. Smith, Fairfield, Conn., assigner to The La Resista Corset Company, Bridgeport, Conn., a corporation of Connecticut Filed May 1, 1959, Ser. No. 816,335 1 Claim. (Cl. 12d-463) The present invention relates to body supporting garments such as brassieres and the like, and particularly to molding and supporting insert members for incorporation in such garments.

It is particularly proposed to provide a laminated insert member constructed entirely of textile fabric material, as distinguished from previous known insert members which employed plastic sheet material, metal foil, and other such non-textile materials as a stiifening layer of a laminated structure. It is proposed according to the invention to provide a laminated insert member having outer textile fabric layers having suitable textile characteristics, for adaptation in the garment to provide outer and inner surfaces substantially conforming in appearance and feel to the textile fabrics making up the major structure of the garment, and to provide an intermediate stiffening layer of woven fabric material of a special type having the characteristic of being relatively stilf in one direction, for instance vertically, and relatively flexible in the other direction, for instance laterally. 'Ille resulting structure has the advantage of porosity, washability and adaptation to the normal manufacturing procedures employed in the production of brassieres and similar garments, having Capability of being easily cut to shape, stitched in place, and otherwise handled in similar manner to other textile fabrics normally employed in such garments.

It has been found that a suitable textile material for carrying out the purposes of the inventon is the woven fabric material known as Kendall cloth, as disclosed in the U.S. patent to R. C. Whitman 2,409,089 of October 8, 1946, for Directionally Stiff Woven Fabric and Method, assigned to The Kendall Company of Boston, Mass. This woven fabric has much greater stiffness in one yarn direction than in the other and consists of sets of warp and lling yarn interwoven with each other, one set of yarn consisting mainly of fused cellulosic grouped yarns materially stier than those of the other set and providing greater stiffness in their direction. By disposing such woven fabric in the laminated structure with the yarns of greater stiffness disposed in the direction in which the stiffness is to be imparted to the insert member, such member is produced having the desirable characteristics of being sufhciently stiff in one direction to provide the desired molding and supporting characteristics of the insert while being also suficiently iiexible in said one direction to allow the insert to comfortably conform to the body surfaces, and of being exible to a high degree in the other direction, so that in the case of incorporation of such members in the breast cups of brassieres they may be freely curved to the rounded form of such cups and will have the desired degree of yieldability.

Other objects and advantages will become apparent from a consideration of the following detailed description taken in connection with the accompanying drawings wherein a satisfactory embodiment of the invention is shown. However, it will be understood that the invention is not limited to the details disclosed but includes all such variations and modications as fall within the spirit of the invention and the scope of the appended claim.

In the drawings:

FIG. l is a plan view showing the outer side of an insert member according to the invention with portions of the intermedaite and outer layers broken away;

3,@2l45 Patented Feb. 20, 19652 cup, the remaining outline of the cup being shown in dotand-dash lines;

FIG. 5 is a side view;

FIG. 6 is a top plan View;

FiG. 7 is a diagrammatic sectional view showing the fabric laminations of the insert member in separated relation;

FIG. 8 is a diagrammatic sectional view showing assembled laminated structure of the insert member; and

FIG. 9 is a diagrammatic plan view of a piece of Kendall cloth.

Referring to the drawings, the insert member according to the illustrated exemplary embodiment of the invention comprises a laminated structure consisting of an intermediate layer of woven fabric material i0 having relatively greater stiffness in one direction than in the other, an outer layer Il which may be of any suitable flexible woven or knitted fabric material, and an inner layer l2 which also may be of any suitable flexible woven or knitted fabric material and is preferably provided with a raised nap 13 at its outer side to impart to the inner surface of the insert member a soft felt or flannel-like texture where the insert member incorporated in the garment contacts the skin of the wearer. The laminations are adhered together by adhesive layers 14 and 15 shown in FIG. 7 as coated upon the surfaces of the intermediate layer lti, so that the outer and

inner layers

11 and 12 may be pressed into adhered relation to the intermediate layer as shown in FIG. 8. It will be understood that adherance of the layers may be carried out in any suitable manner, for instance, the adhesive layers may first be applied at the inner sides of the layers l1 and l2, or a thin film of adhesive may be interposed between the surfaces and adherence accomplished through heat and pressure.

A woven fabric material satisfactory for use as the intermediate layer 10 is so-called Kendall cloth, of the type as shown in FIG. 9 and as disclosed in the patent to Whitman heretofore referred to. A characteristic feature of this fabric is that the yarns in one dire-ction are relatively stiif, while the yarns in the other direction are relatively exible. In order to produce this result in this particular type of material, it has been found that one set of yarns of a woven fabric may be made reactive to chemical treatment to render them many times stiffer than the other set. For example, if a cotton fabric is made with a warp consisting of unscoured or gray cotton yarn, and the filling also is of cotton but is scoured and bleached, it is then entirely feasible to gc1at inize the scoured or bleached cotton yarns by impregnating 4the fabric with a fusing agent, a solution of Zinc chloride for example, and thus stiifen the latter yarns to a very substantial degree without producing any marked effect on the gray yarns. The difference in the reactivity of the bleached and unbleached cotton fibres to the action of fusing agents apparently is due primarily to the fact that raw cotton contains considerable amounts of natural waxes, oils, or similar protective agents which render the unbleached cotton libres Krelatively inert to the action of zinc chloride and other gelatinizing or fusing agents. Later, these protective constitutents can be removed, as by kier boiling, and the entire fabric thus can be made to present a substantially uniform and entirely satisfactory appearance.

In FIG. 9 the stiffened yarns are shown as each consisting of two yarns twisted together to form a single strand, one of the yarns indicated as S having twist in one direction, known in the art as S-twist, and the othe-r yarn indicated as Z having twist `in the opposite direction, known in the art as Z-twist. The purpose of this, as pointed out in the Whitman patent, is to balance or neutralize the normal tendency of the stilened yarns to twist more tightly as a result of gelatinization with a consequent tendency of the woven and stifened cloth to curl at the corners of the fabric.

The insert member 16 for incorporation in the lower portion of the breast cups 1'7 of the brassiere 1S is cut from the laminated fabric material to the desired shape, for instance it has a convexly curved lower edge 19 and an upper edge 2t) suitably shaped to the desired design of the brassiere cup, the material being disposed so that its direction of greater stiffness is vertically of the insert member. The insert members are incorporated in the brassiere structure by the normal procedures usually employed in the manufacture of such garments, the -laminated fabric material of the insert member being secured at its edges to adjacent fabric material by normal machine stitching. It will be understood that if desired the insert members may be placed as unstitched inserts in pocket formations of the breast cups.

FIGS. 4-6 illustrate the manner in which the insert member conforms to the lower portion of the brassiere cup, the lateral ilexibility of the member permitting it to be readily bent into the curved shape to conform its lower edge to the loweirounded edge of the cup. The relative stiffness of the member along lines extending between the upper and lower edges provide effectual molding and uplifting support.

What is claimed is:

A flexible laminated garment insert having substantially greater stiiness in one direction than in a transverse direction at right angles t-o said one direction, comprising outer and inner co-extensive layers of iiexible fabric material each having substantially uniform ilexibility in all directions, an intermediate stiiening layer of woven fabric material co-extensive with said outer and inner layers, and adhesive layers co-extensive with and disposed between the opposite sides of said intermediate layer and said outer and inner layers, said intermediate woven layer comprising sets of warp and filling yarns interwoven with each other, the yarns of each set extending throughout the entire area of said intermediate layer in uniformly spaced relation, one of said sets being parallel to said one direction and consisting of yarns substantially stiffer than those of the other set and providing greater stiifness to said insert in its said one direction, and the yarns of said other set providing greater exibility to said insert in its said transverse direction.

References Cited in the tile of this patent UNITED STATES PATENTS 2,409,089 Whitman Oct. 8, 1946 2,686,312 Schmidt Aug. 17, 1954 2,915,067 Bracht Dec. l, 1959