Plate No. 095 · fabric

Ripstop

Ripstop is plain cloth woven with a periodic grid of heavier reinforcing threads, every few millimeters, that arrest a tear before it can travel. The technique was driven by the Second World War, when nylon ripstop replaced silk in parachutes, and it has clothed the demanding ever since: spinnakers, tents, hot air balloons, flak jackets, hiking shells, and the flag planted on the Moon. The visible box grid is the whole point, engineering you can see, a fabric that fails locally instead of catastrophically.