Australian Merino has excellent natural handle. Its renowned drape is due to the fineness of the fibres as well as the natural elasticity and resilience of Merino.

Handle – how Merino feels to the touch

Everyone agrees that Australian Merino has a beautiful handle (or hand). What they mean is that it feels good to touch. However, achieving consensus on the qualities that contribute to handle, and the characteristics of a fabric that produce them, has been far more problematic.

Trying to make objective what is subjective

Since excellent handle is desirable, significant effort has been expended over several decades to try to identify and quantify what it is about a fabric that makes it feel good to the touch. The fundamental difficulty has been that “feel” is entirely subjective, and so what feels good to one might cause an entirely different reaction in another. However, there does seem to be broad agreement that handle is a simple expression for a complex sensation.

Four areas of study

Research into handle has focused on four main areas:
1. Identifying the individual sensations that contribute to handle
2. Analysing the relative contribution of these sensations
3. The psychology and physiology surrounding the sensation of “handle”
4. Relating sensory perceptions to measurable fabric properties

The components of handle

Many studies have focused on isolating the component elements of handle, and two types of descriptor have emerged: single and bipolar (Fig 1). The single descriptor identifies the individual component element of handle, while the bipolar descriptors express the range of sensations that may be experienced within that component element. For example, smoothness is one of the component elements of handle, and a fabric will sit somewhere between “scratchy” and “silky”.

Primary Hand Values and Total Hand Values

These components are also known as “Primary Handle Values” (PHVs), and their bipolar measure describes their “intensity”. Having determined an assessment on all of the PHVs, an experienced handler of fabric will determine an evaluation of overall handle, or Total Handle Value (THV).

Cultural differences

Much of the early work done on quantifying handle occurred in Japan, and, while even there subjective differences between different assessors created problems, trying to translate their assessments to other markets proved even more difficult.

Objective evaluation

The problems caused by subjective evaluations have led to the pursuit of an objective measurement of fabric handle. Research here has tried to:
1. Identify the measurable properties of a fabric that relate to handle
2. Determine the conditions under which measurements should be made
3. Describe quantitatively how these properties are related to handle

Mechanical properties related to handle

This research resulted in ASTM D123 which identifies the physical properties of fabrics related to handle descriptors. (Fig 2)

Objective measurement of handle

In Japan, the KES-F (Kawabata Evaluation System for Fabrics) was developed to allow the handle of any fabric to be objectively measured. However, this set of instruments found to be too complex for use in mill environments. In the late 80s the CSIRO developed SiroFAST (Fabric Assurance by Simple Testing) to measure similar properties to KES-F but was aim at product performance in garments manufactured rather than handle.