Fabric First

At Williams Athletic Club, fabric is where every piece begins. Before silhouettes, colors, or styling decisions are made, we focus on the material and how it will perform in real life.

Our founder, Susi Proudman, studied textiles and spent more than three decades developing fabrics for some of the world’s leading apparel brands. That technical background continues to guide how the collection is developed today.

Below, she explains why fabric matters so much.

With your background in textiles, how has your technical training shaped the way you approach fabric development today?

My training in textiles means I always start with the material first. Fabric is the foundation of how a garment performs — how it moves, breathes, holds its shape, and ultimately how it feels on the body.

When you understand fiber composition, yarn structure, and fabric construction, you realize that performance isn’t just something you add later with finishes or treatments. It’s engineered into the fabric from the very beginning.

So our development process tends to begin with the question: What do we want the garment to do? Once we answer that, we work backwards to design or source the fabric that can deliver that performance naturally.

What truly separates your fabrics from other apparel brands in the women’s golf space?

A lot of brands select fabrics from existing catalogs — which is perfectly normal in the industry. What we try to do differently is look more closely at how the fabric is actually engineered.

We focus heavily on fibre composition, yarn quality, and construction Fibres allow you to determine the inherent performance qualities, the right yarn spinning methods allow you to predict handfeel, durability and the speed / way the fibres perform and the construction allows you to engineer surface level performance and characteristics like scratch. Get one of these things wrong and you have color fastness issues, pilling issues, shrinkage problems among others.

The challenge we are always trying to solve is to create fabrics that move like performance wear but look and feel like something you would expect from a premium lifestyle brand.

How do you go about sourcing the right mills and manufacturing partners? What do you look for in a great mill?

The best mills are collaborative partners, not just suppliers.

After more than 30 years working with some of the world’s leading apparel brands, and many years traveling globally developing product, I’ve had the opportunity to work with many of the best textile mills in the industry. Over time you build real relationships with these partners, and you come to understand what each mill does exceptionally well — whether that’s technical performance knits, refined yarn development, or advanced finishing processes.

That experience gives us access to some of the best mills in the world, and just as importantly, the knowledge of how to work with them. We know their strengths, their machinery, and the types of fabrics they truly excel at, which allows us to collaborate closely and push development further.

What we look for in a great mill is deep technical expertise, strong R&D capability, and a willingness to experiment. The relationship becomes a dialogue where we refine weight, stretch, yarn composition, and finishing processes together.

Consistency is also critical. A great mill can deliver the same quality and performance batch after batch, which is incredibly important when you’re building a brand around reliability and long-term trust with customers.

What makes the mills you work with special compared to standard suppliers in the industry?

Many of the mills we work with specialize in performance textiles and have been developing technical fabrics for decades.

They invest heavily in machinery, yarn innovation, and finishing technology, which allows us to create fabrics with very precise performance characteristics — whether that’s moisture management, recovery, or durability.

But just as important is their craftsmanship. Even in highly technical fabrics, the finishing and hand feel still require a lot of expertise.

Can you walk us through the process of developing a fabric — from concept to final garment?

It really begins long before we sit down with a mill. A lot of our development starts with travel and research — visiting textile regions around the world, attending fabric trade shows, and staying close to the innovation happening across the industry.

From there we create a development brief that outlines the performance characteristics we’re looking for — things like stretch behavior, breathability, recovery, weight, and hand feel. We share that brief with a mill whose expertise aligns with what we’re trying to achieve, and together we establish what we can develop.

That’s when the real work begins. The mill produces the first development swatches, which we review and run initial testing on to confirm performance. Then we refine — adjusting yarns, construction, or finishing — and the mill re-swatches. That process can repeat several times until we feel the fabric is performing exactly the way we want.

Once we’re confident in the development stage, we move to a sample roll. The fabric is tested again, then made into prototype garments so we can see how it behaves in real life.

After that we move into bulk production. We test the first yardage from the bulk run to confirm that performance and quality remain consistent when the fabric scales to production. And finally, we test again at the end of production to ensure everything has maintained the standards we expect.

It’s a highly iterative process with multiple checkpoints along the way, but that discipline is what ensures the fabric performs the same way in the finished garment as it did in development.

Is there a particular fabric or garment in your collection that you feel best represents your standards and expertise? Why does it stand out?

One example would be the performance knit we use in several of our core pieces. It’s engineered with a balanced nylon and elastane construction that provides excellent stretch recovery while maintaining a smooth, refined surface.

What I like about that fabric is that it performs extremely well on the course — it moves with the body, breathes well, and maintains shape — but visually it still feels polished enough to wear beyond sport.

That dual purpose is exactly what we aim for across the collection.

In performance categories like golf, what are the most important technical features women should expect from their apparel fabrics?

Comfort and mobility are essential. Golf involves a lot of rotational movement, so stretch and recovery are critical.

Breathability and moisture management also matter, particularly in warm conditions. Fabrics need to regulate temperature and move moisture away from the skin.

And finally durability — golf apparel often gets worn for long periods of time, so fabrics should  be comfortable to wear, maintain their shape, and appearance throughout a full day of wear.

Why is fabric innovation such a central part of your brand identity, rather than simply focusing on design or aesthetics?

Design and aesthetics are important, but fabric ultimately determines whether the garment works in real life.

If the fabric performs well — if it moves with the body, feels comfortable, and holds its shape — the wearer immediately notices the difference.

For us, fabric innovation is what allows us to bridge the space between performance apparel and refined everyday clothing.

How does the choice of fabric impact the overall experience for someone wearing your brand?

Fabric affects almost every aspect of the experience — comfort, movement, temperature regulation, and even confidence.

When a garment moves naturally with the body and maintains its structure throughout the day, the wearer doesn’t have to think about it. It simply works.

That’s ultimately what we’re aiming for: clothing that performs effortlessly so women can focus on what they’re doing, not what they’re wearing.