Imagine a firefighter facing a fire in extremely high temperatures. Or a technician who has to wear a PPE garment for many hours while making repairs. Or a soldier who has to wear a skin-contact ballistic jacket all day for his safety.
Is it possible with the right clothing to help these professionals in their work?
This is the question we ask ourselves at Grassi 1925 every time we design a technical garment. How can we give more comfort to those who have to wear these garments for many hours and often in extreme conditions, like a firefighter or a soldier? And it’s not just about making it more comfortable. But also to increase protection: when garments are particularly uncomfortable, unfortunately sometimes worker choose not to wear them, also putting their safety at risk in cases of PPE and bulletproof vests.
For this reason we aim to develop workwear garments with optimal fit and all possible precautions to ensure greater comfort. Research in this helps us because it offers us always new solutions for fabrics or packaging.
Graphene is non-toxic, antibacterial, antistatic, hypoallergenic and with a high heat dissipation capacity.
One of these innovations is graphene, the latest generation material discovered by Konstantin Novoselov and Andre Geim of the University of Manchester and which earned the two scholars the Nobel Prize in 2010. Graphene has the mechanical strength of diamond, but it is very light and flexible. Its structure is made up of a layer of single carbon atoms arranged in hexagons and exhibits incredible properties that are revolutionizing many aspects of industrial production.
Graphene in clothing
One of the fields of application of graphene is certainly fashion, and textiles in general. Indeed graphene is an excellent electrical conductor and reduces that annoying sensation of shock that is experienced especially with synthetic garments. It also incredibly improves the fabrics performance thanks to its bacteriostaticity and lightness, important characteristics in the production of sports or workwear garments. It is a hypoallergenic product: it can therefore be worn in contact skin without causing irritation and allergies. Last but not least, graphene have high dissipative capacity of body heat. In simpler terms: graphene, applied to fabrics, evenly distributes heat of our body, “moving” it from the hottest to the coldest points and so offering greater thermal comfort to the wearer.
Graphene in the garments lowers the body temperature even by one degree. Do you think it is non much? But aren’t a few lines of fever enough to make us feel tired and exhausted?
Indeed, it has been shown that, in a moment of physical effort, lowering the temperature even by just a few tenths can improve the resistance and fatigue endurance and increase our body performance.
For this reason we apply graphene surface treatment (called Planar Thermal Circuit) to the linings of uniforms for firefighters, soldiers and in general for garments that require high performance in particularly critical conditions.
A sustainable graphene
In Grassi 1925 we were not satisfied with just any graphene, indeed we chose to use Graphene G + patented by Directa Plus, a start-up born in Lomazzo, in the province of Como, near our home! Why is the G + so special? Because it is a certified and sustainable graphene obtained through chemical-free water-based processes, totally different from standard production methods. In this way, this defect-free product maintains its non-toxic, antibacterial, antistatic and hypoallergenic properties.
