Copyright © Françoise Herrmann
Spanx®, the company that markets Bra-llelujahs®, while boasting “20 Years of great rears”, has a nearly quarter-century history of revolutionizing women’s shapewear. In fact, Spanx® was the company that first ushered body sculpting shapewear, into women’s fashion, in such popular, sensitive, fun, and impeccably researched ways. Shapewear that quickly became Haute contour®. As a result, no wonder that, in 2012, fifteen years after the creation of Spanx®, in 1998, Forbes Magazine declared Sara Blakely, founder, and mastermind, of fashionable contourwear, the youngest, self-made woman billionaire.
Beginning with footless, body-shaping, pantyhose to enable women to wear sandals with their favorite jeans, followed by “control top fishnet pantyhose” to solve the “grid butt” issue, the rest is history. The legband-free, power mid-thigh hosiery shaper, for smooth lines, a new line of Mama Spanx® support and shapewear; the nationwide roll-out of the more affordable Spanx® Assets® line at Target; a boutique at Bloomingdale’s, on 59th Street, in NYC; a new line of men’s compression undershirts; the inauguration of the “Give a dam!” Sara Blakely Foundation, and the opening of Spanx® standalone boutiques, Spanx®'s rise to fashion fame was nothing less than meteoric.
Interestingly, behind Spanx®’s fabulous, crimson red, marketing campaigns with Sara Blakely cartoon avatars, women’s delight with the continuous rollout of pun-filled product lines, and shout outs with former Flotus Michelle Obama “We all wear ‘em!”, there is a serious portfolio of patented inventions, each responding to very specific problematic situations of the prior art, each bringing improvement, innovation, and new ways of cost-efficient manufacturing. Arm hosiery is no exception.
Mapped onto the design of body-sculpting leg hosiery, arm hosiery also aims to provide the advantages of resolving one, or several, of the following issues: added warmth, modesty, attractive covering of cellulite and other skin issues, and/or shaping of the upper body extremities to improve circulation, and to minimize the development of varicose veins. Most importantly, the basic problematic situation that the invention addresses is simply that such type of multifunctional hosiery for the upper extremities was not mass-produced, prior to Spanx® design and manufacture, even if dancers had found workarounds for many years. Dancer workaround, for the absence of arm hosiery, consisted in cutting off the feet on their leg tights, and cutting out the crotch, to make a shrug that could be worn across the back of shoulders, for the purpose of keeping arms warm. Thus, arm hosiery definitely fulfilled a need, both arising out of the desire to dress comfortably, attractively, and sensibly, and a market void. However, the Spanx® arm hosiery invention also invoked a few more inventive aspects, particularly the issue of how to design and manufacture arm tights for the upper body, which was non-obviously very different from the design, and methods, invoked for the lower body.
The US utility patent application US20180310634A1, titled Arm hosiery and method of making same, discloses all the aspects of the arm hosiery invention, and its production processes. Specifically, the patent application discloses seamless, lightweight sleeves, sewn or bonded on each side of an attractive bodice. A bodice, surrounding the wearer’s torso, that is also seamless, or with seams on the front and back, or seams on the sides. The patent application also discloses that sleeves might be non-compressive, graduated compressive or zone-compressive, offering mild to strong constriction. The sleeves might be full length, three-quarter length, or elbow length, or otherwise designed and variously attached to the bodice, without exceeding the scope of the invention. Likewise, the bodice could be opaque, sheer or non-sheer, with a racertrack back or other configuration without exceeding the scope of the invention. However, the preferred bodice embodiments of the invention are usually non-compressive, in response to women’s preferences.
The patent application also discloses a more cost-effective
manufacturing process than the Italian warp knitting process, which enables circular
knitting of seamless tubes of different sizes, as a single piece, for the
manufacture of high-end sportswear. The
arm-hosiery manufacturing process invoked for this invention is fine gauge (>40) circular
knitting machines, specifically single-cylinder, with 4 to 6 feeds, running at a
speed in excess of 1000 rpm. The machines enable cut or run lines, following
which the small diameter seamless sleeves will be cutout with a hot knife, and/or
sewn with overlock stitching (which includes cutting), or the sleeves might otherwise be bonded to the
bodice, according to a specified design (for example raglan or in-set). The machines are
computer-controlled for the type of knitting, and otherwise electro-mechanical. They
may be programmed to finish the end of the arms with a hem, double hem, trim or
other design.
Likewise, the bodice is
produced separately with a circular hosiery knitting machine, of the same, or larger, diameter. According to a preferred manufacturing process, the bodice is produced out of two
tubes, slit, and sewn or bonded, to wrap around the torso. The preferred embodiment of the bodice further takes the shape of a banded crop top, finished with the machine,
although the patent application specifies that a wide variety of bodice designs might be produced, such as “open bust, waist length, hip length, slip length, bodysuit or catsuit”. Likewise, the bodice neckline might also vary to include “crew neck,
v-neck, scoop neck, low cut, turtleneck, open bust, binding, decorative trim
and/or embellishments”.
Arm hosiery, more specifically, arm tights or arm stockings are described that provide a wearer with the same advantages as tights or stocking can provide for the legs. The arm hosiery as described are seamless hosiery that are attached to a comfortable and attractive bodice providing comfortable and attractive sheer arm covers that can be worn under a variety of tops, dresses, and the like. [Abstract US20180310634A1]
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