Arabella Guide | What’s the Future View & Latest Trends of Performance Fabrics? Arabella’s Lesson 1 in 2026

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Arabella Clothing is back for the game of activewear from the year of the Horse!

Just yesterday, we invited our fabric supplier to share more of the latest technical fabrics to elevate our knowledge base of performance wear. As one of the pioneering athletic clothing suppliers, Arabella Clothing is keen to follow the tide of activewear market. We have listed out more key points that you can’t really miss on this course. Let’s check them out together!

3 Basic Categories of Performance Fabrics & 1 Future View in the Activewear Market

Normally, our fabrics for athletic wear, especially yoga and gym clothes, can be separated into 3 categories based on fabric supporting or compressing levels: low-support, mid-support and high-support. The compressing level basically decides how much exercise intensity these performance clothes can support. At the same time, fits, brushes and stretch differ among these fabrics so that they can deal with different problems during working out, such as coverage, chafing, pilling and more details. For example, low support fabrics are suitable for athletic basic wear while high support fabrics are suitable for high-intensity workout wear.

Our partners showed us some fabrics samples they brought to let our team learn more differences between them.

What are the differences between normal elastane, Hyosung elastane and Lycra?

By learning more about latest performance fabrics from our fabric supplier, more differences in elastane are getting clearer including Lycra, Hyosung elastane and normal elastane. For instance, Lycra is 4 times as stretchy as normal elastane and 5 times as stretchy as Hyosung elastane. Also, it has better coverage and fitting compared to the other two, which makes it able to cover versatile sport levels like pilates, yoga, even CrossFit games. Besides, due to the excellent shape-retention and covering qualities, Lycra is a highly-recommended fiber for size-inclusive performance clothing lines.

Black or White?

It is not only just exists in Rock music, but elastane.

In the textile world, white elastane means the color when you stretch your elastane fabric wide. It might affect the appearance when the wearers doing squat. Most of elastane blend fabric shows white color and most of the time, it is acceptable by the market. However, if your brands have a higher requirement for non-see-through, it might not be acceptable. As opposed to the white elastane, black elastane is designed to solve this problem. Nevertheless, it is more suitable for dark color fabrics considering the problem of color fastness.

Our fabric supplier also shared that some innovative brands are now experimenting with “color-matched elastane”—elastane dyed to match the base fabric’s exact shade—blending the best of both worlds: no see-through issues and seamless color integration, though this comes with a higher production cost. Except that, they also shared more details that they’ve been experienced in the production of performance fabrics.

The lesson is just an opening of our 2026. Along with the upcoming transition of activewear market as well as people’s demand, learning is the core energy and lifetime ability to follow this changing world, as our business manager Bella said in the end of the lesson. We feel highly appreciated for our supplier and would like to share you more of it with you. Hopefully it empowers you for your clothing lines and create a brilliance with Arabella in 2026!

Learn more about Arabella Clothing through:

info@arabellaclothing.com