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Loopback Terry or Brushed Fleece for Autumn

Loopback terry or brushed fleece: how each heavy sweat is built, how to tell them apart, which suits a Canadian autumn and how to care for both.

Two hoodies can weigh the same and feel nothing alike. The gsm figure tells you how much cloth is in the garment. It says nothing about how that cloth is built, and the build decides whether you cook on a 12 degree walk or stand shivering at a bus stop in October.

The sewn-in label won't settle it either. Under Canada's Textile Labelling and Advertising Regulations, the disclosure label has to show fibre content, the dealer's name and postal address or a CA identification number, and the country of origin where the article is represented as imported. Fabric weight and knit construction are not on that list. So "100% cotton" can describe either of the two constructions below.

Almost every heavy sweat is one of them. Loopback terry or brushed fleece. Here's the difference, and how each behaves once the weather turns.

What loopback terry is

Loopback is a knit with a smooth jersey face and a back made of small loops. Turn a sleeve inside out and you can see them, rows of little cotton rings sitting against the skin. In loopback, those loops are left as they come off the machine.

Nothing has been pulled out of the back yarn, so the cloth keeps its full strength and a dense, even back. It holds its shape, sits firm against the body and takes a long time to go slack. In our experience it softens over months of wear and wash, not on the first day. That's an observation from wearing the stuff, not a lab result.

What brushed fleece is

Brushed fleece starts from the same family of knit. Cotton Incorporated's technical bulletin Napping of Cotton Fabrics describes cotton fleece as a single jersey with a pile yarn laid into the back using tuck stitches. Because that back yarn never knits, mills can use a weaker, low twist yarn there, which is easier to raise. The cloth then runs through a napper, where rollers covered in steel napper wire pull fibres up out of the back yarn into a soft pile. It's usually sheared afterwards to level the pile, and the same bulletin lists preventing pilling among the reasons for that step.

The result is softer straight out of the bag and less dense in the hand than loopback of the same weight, because what you feel is loft rather than yarn. It's also the warmer of the two when you're standing still. A study of two-yarn fleece by Gunesoglu and Kaplangiray in the Indian Journal of Fibre & Textile Research found the raising process "very effective on heat transfer properties", while fibre type had the stronger effect on how moisture and air move through the cloth.

The trade is strength and surface life. Cotton Incorporated says plainly that napping generally reduces fabric strength, because the fibres pulled up into the nap no longer contribute to it. A brushed face is loosened fibre by design, so it flattens wherever it rubs. Underarms, the strap line across the chest, the inside of the cuffs.

Those are also where pills tend to show first. The usual lab measure is ASTM D3512/D3512M, which runs fabric specimens through a random tumble pilling tester and grades them against visual standards from 5, no pilling, to 1, very severe pilling. ASTM itself says the method is not recommended for acceptance testing because agreement between laboratories is poor. A pilling grade is a fair comparison inside one lab. It isn't a promise about any particular hoodie.

How to tell which one you're holding

Since the label won't say, and a product page often won't either, check the cloth itself. None of this needs a lab.

  • Turn the hem or a cuff inside out. Rows of small, even loops mean loopback. A soft, matted surface with no loops to see means the back has been brushed.
  • Pinch the back between finger and thumb. Loopback feels like yarn, dense and springy. Fleece feels like loft, and it compresses more for the same weight.
  • Look at the underarms on a worn one. Flat, shiny patches in the pile are fleece wearing as fleece does. Loopback at the same spot looks much like the rest of the panel.
  • Don't read the gsm as an answer. The same number can sit on either cloth, so weight tells you how much, not which.

Which one for a Canadian autumn

Weight and construction work together. A 400 gsm loopback and a 400 gsm fleece are not interchangeable, and neither number tells the whole story on its own. For what the extra grams do and don't buy you over the years, see Does a Heavier Hoodie Last Longer?

The temperature bands below are our rule of thumb from wearing both. No standard we found sets a temperature range for either cloth, and people run warm or cold in ways no chart captures.

  • Moving outdoors, roughly 8 to 16 degrees. Loopback. The back stays compact, so there's less still air holding heat against you, and you arrive dry instead of damp.
  • Standing still, roughly 0 to 8 degrees. Fleece. The raised pile does the work when your body isn't producing much heat.
  • Under a shell or a work jacket. Loopback. Less bulk at the shoulder, so the outer layer sits the way it was cut.
  • Rain coast autumn. Loopback, on balance. A raised pile is loose fibre with a lot of surface to hold water. We haven't found a published test comparing drying time for the two, so treat this as experience rather than data.
  • Indoors as the only layer. Either. This is where fleece earns its reputation.

What changes after a year

Loopback ages slowly and visibly. The loops compact, the hand softens, and the panels start to sit the way your shoulders sit. The face looks much the same at month twelve as it did at month one.

Fleece ages faster and unevenly. The pile lies down in the high wear zones first, so the garment develops flat, shiny patches while the rest still looks new. It isn't a fault. It's what happens to raised fibre under friction, and it follows from the strength trade the napping bulletin describes.

Pick loopback if the piece needs to last and look consistent. Pick fleece if the piece needs to be warm and soft right now.

Care runs differently

  1. Wash fleece the right way out. The brushed side is the inside of the garment, so washing it as worn keeps the pile off the drum and away from zips and other clothes. The common advice to turn everything inside out does the opposite on fleece. Loopback can go either way.
  2. Skip fabric softener on both. In a study by Parthiban and Ramesh Kumar in the Indian Journal of Fibre & Textile Research, softener applied over repeated laundering significantly reduced the air permeability and wickability of cotton fabrics and raised their thermal insulation value. For a cloth you chose because it vents, that's the wrong direction.
  3. Cold water, low spin. Wash temperature and drying method are the variables the industry tests when it measures shrinkage. AATCC TM135 measures length and width change after home laundering across four wash temperatures, three agitation cycles and four drying procedures, and AATCC notes these represent, but may not exactly replicate, what happens in real homes. Our own washing settings are in the care instructions.
  4. Hang loopback by the shoulders, flat dry fleece. A wet heavy knit carries a lot of water, and the raised side is the one you least want dragged out of shape. This is workshop habit, not a tested rule. For keeping a slow-drying heavy knit fresh, see How to Air Dry a Heavy Hoodie Without It Going Musty.
  5. Give fleece a shake before it dries. It lifts the pile back up without a machine. Again, habit rather than evidence, but it costs nothing.

If the choice is still close, buy for the coldest thing you actually do outside, not the coldest day of the year. It's easy to wear one layer too heavy in October and take it off by noon.

Sources

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