When you’re looking for a comfortable material for your loungewear, the two most prominent options of your choices might be the French terry and the fleece. With both of these knit fabrics, you can create a dress to suit your needs, whether it is a dress for the gym or an outfit for running errands. Therefore, they are considered low-maintenance fabrics, with their high level of comfort and softness.
Despite both belonging to the same knit fabric family, they have distinct characteristics, indicating their distinctive uses and variety. Confusion exists despite the obvious comfort. Which one is better: French terry vs fleece? Stop being confused and let us help you choose between these two.
What Is Knit Fabric?
Knit fabric is a textile that comes after knitting yarns. Let us clarify. If you ever used handwoven fabric, you must be familiar with the inter-looping yarns. Because professionals use the same technique when making handwoven clothing. Identically, the knit fabric comes with the same mechanism in its knitting. However, the inter-looping of yarns is so tiny that you cannot do such things using your hands.
As a matter of fact, the knit fabric is actually a modified version of the woven fabric. So, it is more flexible because of its smaller construction of inter-meshing loops. For such characteristics, you’ll mostly see that fabric in making hats, socks, pajamas, etc.
What Does French Terry Mean?
To understand the French terry, you should first know about the terry cloth. Because French terry is a subcategory of the terry cloth. Specifically, Terry cloth is a type of cloth that is made using moisture-wicking material and absorbs liquids very smoothly. Besides, it has loops resulting in soft piles of yarn.
When talking about the French terry, it also has the same characteristics as terry cloth. The only difference is that the French Terry comes with the same feature only on one side. On the other side, this fabric features a flat unlooped surface. Not to mention, the specialty of French terry fabric is its stretchy behavior, and you can stretch it like a jersey terry cloth.
Simply, you can categorize the French terry as a light to the mid-weight fabric. And, the material is suitable for both formal and casual uses. So, you’ll see that fabric is mostly to be used in pullovers, hoodies, sweatshirts, etc. If you look at the raw materials, the French terry can contain only cotton and sometimes a mixture of other fabrics like organic soy, polyester, lycra, rayon, spandex, etc., with cotton.
What Does Fleece Mean?
Fleece, as we have mentioned, is a type of knit fabric. Therefore, you’ll also see loungewear made from fleece fabrics, just as you’d see French terry in loungewear. In addition, sweatpants and sweatshirts are also made of fleece fabrics.
Like the French terry fabric, this fabric also comes with loops that are kept at the inside part of the clothing. However, the manufacturing process is different here. At the time of manufacturing, the loops are shredded and cut up to create a fuzzy as well as a soft feeling in the cloth.
As the loops are shredded, the gaps between loops become smaller, and the clothing results in less breathability. However, you cannot identify a fabric using the breathability feature. So, it is very easy to become confused as French terry is also used on the same clothing where the fleece is also commonly used.
French Terry vs Fleece – Differences Between Them
Generally speaking, fleece and French may seem the same to you. But, they are not exactly the same. While their making processes are fairly similar, you’ll notice many distinct differences between them, which we’ll explain below.
Moisture Wicking Capability
You know that both fleece and French terry are extremely comfortable in terms of regular use. However, that doesn’t mean that you can use these fabrics in any condition, whatever you want. Actually, these fabrics don’t have the same moisture-wicking capability. When talking about this specific characteristic, French Terry can always do better. Because the French terry has bigger loops that can hold more moisture than the fleece.
Warmth
Both fabrics are good at providing a warmer feeling when comparing them with others. However, there is a slight difference between their performances. Knowing that the French terry is lightweight to mid-weight, you can easily understand that the fleece is heavier than the French terry. So, French terry gives more allowance for breath-taking capability. Besides, it also has a better moisture-wicking capability. All of these things simply refer to the fact that French terry is better to keep you cooler.
On the other hand, fleece is less breathable and lacks much moisture-wicking capability. So, it is obvious that airflow is lower in this fabric. As a result, fleece is better to keep you warmer. However, the choice depends on one’s personal wish and several weather conditions. If you feel warmer than the people around you, you should wear French terry. In contrast, when you feel warmer than other people, you should go for the fleece fabric.
Usage
If you consider their extensive uses, French terry has much more variety in its usage. On the contrary, fleece is used to make only loungewear or sweatshirt-type clothing. When you think about the French terry, you can use it to cover up your gym clothes. Sometimes, you can use it to stay warm after heavy workouts. That’s not the end. There are also other casual outfits available that have French terry fabric in them. Most likely, almost every person tries to have at least one French terry cloth in the closet.
Different from the french terry, fleece fabric is only suitable for casual clothing because of its smaller loopholes. The weighty and thick nature of this fabric doesn’t allow it to fit in a formal environment. So, you will rarely see on a business occasion or night out that someone is wearing a cloth with fleece in it.
Wrinkling
Usually, wrinkles are not a major concern for these fabrics. Because both fleece and French terry are easy to wash and use. They don’t wrinkle so quickly, as both come from natural fabrics and have a good level of natural stretching capability. And, you know that lower stretching means a higher chance of getting wrinkled.
To put it in a simple sentence, both of the fabrics don’t wrinkle in a normal state. If your cloth wrinkles in any condition, you can fix it with minimal effort. And, you will be glad to know, removing wrinkles from fleece or French terry fabric requires only a few moments inside a dryer. After that, they are ready to be used again like new.
Final Words
Differentiating between two similar fabrics can be challenging. In this article, we have attempted to cover all aspects of these fabrics. Though both of them are knit fabrics, French terry is cooler than fleece. Furthermore, fleece is suitable for casual uses like sweatshirts and sweatpants, while French terry can be used both for casual and activewear.
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