KidSuper Spring/Summer 2023 - Superby’s

When Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon on July 20, 1969, he was wearing a suit made by the International Latex Corporation of Dover, Delaware, part of the company that made Playtex bras and girdles (Smithsonian). In the 1950s and ’60s, ILC’s Playtex branch was the largest maker of foundation garments in the US. Some of its sewers moved over to spacesuits, and the latex-dipping process used for shapewear was used on suit parts too (Elizabeth Way, The Museum at FIT). ILC beat out other contenders, including Hamilton Standard and the David Clark Company, to win the contract (Dana Finkle, Threads).

Each A7L suit had 21 layers of material, including rubber, neoprene, synthetics and nylon tricot. Its outer layer was Teflon-coated glass fiber, added after a 1967 fire killed three astronauts and NASA required suits to withstand temperatures over 1,000°F (Smithsonian; Threads). Seamstresses like Jean Wilson and Joanne Thompson hand-stitched them to exacting standards, where a stitch 1/32 of an inch off wouldn’t pass (Threads). “Lives are at stake when astronauts wear what we make,” ILC engineering specialist Guada told FIT. As for Armstrong: “Its true beauty,” he said of the suit, “was that it worked” (Smithsonian).

Net-a-Porter (2000): former Tatler editor Natalie Massenet launched it with content “more akin to a fashion magazine than mere product descriptions.” Clothes were shot on models, and orders arrived in black-and-white boxes with bows and tissue paper (Don-Alvin Adegeest, FashionUnited).
SSENSE (2003): brothers Rami, Bassel and Firas Atallah started it in Montreal. Rami began the business while studying computer science and reselling designer jeans. It built a loyal customer base worldwide before filing for bankruptcy protection in 2025 (Amelia Eqbal, CBC).
Farfetch (2008): José Neves, who had founded the footwear label Swear, built it as one marketplace where independent boutiques around the world could compete with the biggest e-commerce sites (Farfetch).
Vestiaire Collective (2009): Fanny Moizant and Sophie Hersan founded it in Paris as “Vestiaire de Copines,” literally “friends’ closet,” with a few thousand secondhand pieces from people they knew. It now operates in more than 70 countries (Diane Vanderschelden, FashionUnited).
Grailed (December 2013): Arun Gupta coded it in about three months after spending years hunting deals on menswear forums like StyleForum and SuperFuture. He launched it with about 200 items he listed himself (Skylar Bergl and Andy Hur, Complex).
StockX (February 2016): it grew out of Campless, Josh Luber’s site tracking rare sneaker resale prices. With Detroit businessman Dan Gilbert, he built a “stock market of things” where buyers bid, sellers ask and items are checked at verification centers. It went on to a $3.8 billion valuation (Sherin Shibu, Entrepreneur).

Under a microscope, every fiber has a fingerprint. Wool, like all animal hair, is covered in overlapping scales that make its surface rough. Coarse wool has jagged, zig-zag scales and a visible core called a medulla, while fine wool has none (Canadian Conservation Institute). Cotton looks like a twisted ribbon, with turns called convolutions along its length and a hollow center, the lumen, that takes up more than half its width. Mercerizing cotton, a chemical treatment that makes it shinier, removes most of the twists. Cultivated silk is a smooth, cylindrical rod with occasional bulges, with no scales and no twists (Canadian Conservation Institute). Cotton’s twists are easy to spot because its fibers aren’t round, while wool’s scales can be damaged or hidden by harsh bleaching or dyeing (Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education). Because no single test is foolproof, textile conservators pair microscopy with a burn test (Canadian Conservation Institute).