With winter coming in the north hemisphere, down jackets have become popular again among consumers as a “weapon” to protect themselves warm. However, due to the rising cost of down raw materials this year, the phenomenon of selling inferior products as good ones has emerged frequently on the market. Recently, CCTV’s “Financial Investigation” program reported the chaos of illegal merchants using ‘feather’ instead of ‘down’ for counterfeit down products, which have attracted widespread attention from the public. According to reports, illegal merchants use substandard and cheap materials such as down noils, feather or crushed hair to replace down and the inferior down jackets they produce not only have poor thermal insulation performance but also may pose health risks. In response, the China Down Industry Association issued a down product consumption notice, reminding consumers to buy from regulated channels and avoid low-price traps when purchasing down products. So in addition to this, what information will you need to know when buying a down jacket?
1. Check the basic information of the product. In terms of product details and name, it must be called ‘down’ jacket. Others such as feather fabric and down cotton are not down products. Meanwhile you need to check the product label to see if it includes key information including clearly stating implementation of the new GB standard (GB/T 14272-2021 Down Clothing), manufacturer’s name and address.
2. Check the type of the down. The main filling materials for down jackets on the market are goose down and duck down. Relatively speaking, goose down clusters are larger and goose down fibre is longer, so it can provide better warmth than duck down. Down can be divided into white duck down, grey duck down, white goose down and grey goose down according to colour and type. The price from high to low is usually: white goose down, grey goose down, white duck down and grey duck down. However, the quality of down has no direct relationship with its colour but it’s related to a series of physical and chemical indicators.
3. Check the down content. Down content is the mass percentage of down in down feathers. In the old national standard, the down content is calculated based on the down and down fibre. The new national standard requires the down content to be marked based on down itself and explicitly required its value should not be less than 50%, increasing in increments of 5%. For down jackets of the same volume, the higher the down content, the lighter the weight and the better warmth retention effect it can provides. Consumers can pay attention to whether the down content meets the standard when purchasing down jackets.
4. Check the filling amount. The filling amount refers to the weight of down in the down jacket. The higher the filling amount, the more still air it can contain which means stronger warmth retention. However, if the filling amount is too high, the down jacket will look bloated, affecting wear appearance. The filling amount of thin, early winter and thick down jackets of waist-length is generally 80g, 120g and 160g respectively. For inferior products filled with down noils or crushed hair, the filling amount will be increased in order to obtain a fluffy effect similar to the authentic down jackets, which is obviously different.
5. Check the fluffiness. The higher the fluffiness of a down jacket, the more air is fixed in the insulation layer, and the better warmth retention performance it has. The fluffiness of down jackets on the market is generally divided into 550, 600, 700, 800 and 900. Fluffiness greater than 800 is high-quality down. For products without fluffiness indicator on the tag, you can put the jacket on a flat ground and let it recover in the natural environment for three minutes. Then you can press the jacket by hand and then release immediately. If you can see the jacket is rebound and return to its original state, that means the fluffiness of the down jacket is relatively good.
Source: China Textile Leader |
