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Springback

Springback — stretch fatigue, shown

Will these go
baggy by four?

Every stretch garment loosens over a day. Almost none of them tell you by how much, or which part of it a wash will not give back. Drag the hour below and watch the knee, the seat and the waist go.

Reading
Composition label or flat photograph
Output
Stage plates and a progression clip
Every figure
A range, never a single number
Never shown
A body, in any layer

08:00

Baseline · as put on
A pair of stretch trousers laid flat, in as-put-on condition, with the three measured zones outlined.
Reference plateFlat · never worn

17:00

After 9 hours on
The same trousers laid flat after 9 hours of wear, the knee, seat and waist zones drawn against their morning outlines.
Stage plate · pronounced at the kneeFlat · never worn
9h

Knee

Pronounced

24–37%

added ease, estimated

Flexed most often. Bulges first, recovers best.

Seat

Noticeable

17–27%

added ease, estimated

Loaded continuously while seated. Recovers partly.

Waist

Noticeable

12–20%

added ease, estimated

Held under constant tension. Recovers least.

Second question

Does a wash bring it back?

Partly. Set a wash count and the recovery is redrawn. What sits under the oxide rule is the part that stays.

Knee returns
74–90%
Seat returns
60–80%
Waist returns
40–65%
The same trousers laid flat after 5 washes.Estimated behaviour

What does not come back

  • The waistband gives back the least. Its elastic inlay loses tension with every cycle and that part of the loss is not recoverable.
  • Seat recovery plateaus after roughly five washes. The residual ease across the seat panel stays from then on.

And what this cannot tell you

Four things no photograph contains

Read your own garment
  1. 01

    Which elastomeric fibre was used. Labels give a percentage, not a type, and types differ in how much they give back.

  2. 02

    How the fabric was constructed and finished. Setting, heat treatment and finishing decide recovery more than the percentage does.

  3. 03

    How much you move. A day spent seated and a day spent walking load a garment in completely different places.

  4. 04

    The garment's history before you photographed it. Previous wears and washes are already in the fabric.

How it runs

A label, a sentence, and the hours in between

Three steps, in this order. The stage plates have to be settled before the clip is generated — the clip is drawn from them, so there is no path that skips ahead.

  1. A blank woven care tag inside a garment seam, photographed close up.01

    Photograph the label

    The composition tag, or the garment laid flat. The reading picks up the fibre split and the construction — twill or knit, give in one direction or two. Photographs of a garment being worn are declined.

  2. A strip of stretch fabric held taut between two metal clamps on a test bench.02

    Say how long you wear them

    One sentence is enough. Ten hours at a desk loads a garment nowhere near where eight hours on your feet does, and the stage plates are drawn for the hours you actually gave.

  3. A close crop of the knee of trousers lying flat, showing a soft rounded bulge.03

    Watch where it goes

    Stage plates first: knee, seat and waist against their morning outlines, as ranges. Then, once the plates are settled, the progression clip fills in the hours between them.

The part not on the label

Two per cent tells you almost nothing

A percentage says how much elastomeric fibre is in the cloth. It does not say which kind, how it was spun, which directions it runs in, or how the fabric was set afterwards — and those decide the recovery. Two garments with the same figure on the tag can behave nothing alike.

A single core-spun yarn magnified, a pale elastic core wrapped in a helix of darker fibres, open at one end and coiled at the other.
Core-spun yarn · open at left, coiled at right
Macro photograph of a charcoal twill weave showing parallel diagonal ribs.

Twill

Diagonal ribs, a dense set. Holds its shape longer, and shows the bulge later — but shows it more sharply once it arrives.

Macro photograph of a knitted fabric imitating denim, showing interlocking loops.

Knit

Loops, not a grid. Comfortable immediately, slack sooner. Most of what feels soft in a fitting room is this.

Macro photograph of a fabric with elastic filaments running in one direction only.

Give in one direction

Elastic across the width alone. The knee has nowhere to go along the leg, so the ease collects in one place.

Macro photograph of a fabric with elastic filaments running in both directions.

Give in two

Elastic in both directions. The load spreads, and so does the recovery. Costlier, and rarely stated on a label.

Why a clip and not two pictures

The answer is in the hours you cannot photograph

A morning frame and an evening frame tell you it happened. What you are actually deciding is whether it happens before you need the garment to still look right — and that is the middle, which only a continuous change can show. Hour marks and zone names are drawn by the page over the clip, never by the model. No audio track.

Estimated behaviour
16:9 · 10s · no audio trackFlat · never worn
Estimated
9:16 · 10s · no audio track

Plans

Three plans. No packs, no top-ups.

Credits measure usage of the service and nothing else. They are not money, not stored value, not redeemable and not transferable. What is unused at the end of a period does not roll into the next one.

Free

50 credits / mo

$0USD / month

No card · inkl. MwSt.

Enough to read one garment and see how far it goes.

  • Slack stage images, watermarked
  • Composition and weave reading
  • Wash-recovery ranges in full, never covered by the watermark
  • 50 credits each month
  • No slack-progression video
  • Single aspect ratio
  • Standard queue
Start free

Hold

480 credits / mo

$13USD / month

or $125 USD / year · inkl. MwSt.

For deciding whether one garment is worth the money.

  • Slack-progression video, 8–18 seconds
  • Both aspect ratios, 16:9 and 9:16
  • No watermark
  • 480 credits each month
  • No wash-count tracking across time
  • Standard queue
Choose Hold

Cycle

1800 credits / mo

$38USD / month

or $365 USD / year · inkl. MwSt.

For following a wardrobe through its wash cycles.

  • Everything in Hold
  • Multiple saved garment records
  • Wash-count tracking, so recovery is logged rather than guessed at
  • Priority queue
  • 1800 credits each month
Choose Cycle

All prices in US dollars (USD), inkl. MwSt. Full plan comparison, credit costs and where the wall sits

Questions

Including the two we are asked most

If something here is not answered, write to us. A person replies.

Support

We do not, and the site never claims to. What you get is a general estimate built from the composition you photographed and the construction visible in the picture. It is not a test of your garment. The exact elastomeric fibre type and the finishing process decide most of the recovery behaviour, and neither is printed on a label — so neither is available to us, or to you. That is why every figure here is given as a range and marked as estimated behaviour, and why the list of what we cannot know appears next to every result.

Find out before you pay for it, not at four in the afternoon

Fifty credits a month, no card. Enough to read a composition and see the stage plates, including the part about what does not come back.

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