Ascend Form Norway: Odor-Free High-Waist Leggings Built on Copper Ion Filament

Ascend Form is a Norway-based activewear label whose leggings programme sells directly to consumers and through selected retail partners. The team asked us to rebuild the fabric from scratch because the premium tier had to justify its price with something customers could actually feel. The target was a measurable freshness difference against the core range.

Ascend Form: odour-control swatch set for the leggings programme

The challenge

The smell built up at the inner thigh and the waistband, where sweat sits longest during a session. The previous fabric was a standard synthetic knit with no odour strategy, so bacteria broke the sweat down on the fabric and the smell became permanent after a few weeks. A price increase planned for the following season made the problem urgent: the brand needed a fix before the next bulk booking, not a new supplier search.

The fabric solution

We built the programme around Copper Ion Filament on a polyamide knit base. The mechanism matters: copper damages bacterial cell walls and also improves thermal transfer away from the skin. Keeping the base at interlock knit with 22% elastane and 240 GSM meant the hand, the stretch and the cover stayed exactly where the design team wanted them, because odour control changed the chemistry and the construction rather than the silhouette.

Wear trial and fit approval of the polyamide knit fabric

Development and implementation

• Week 1: brief agreed, sweat zone mapped, target set as bacterial reduction above 98% with improved thermal diffusion by AATCC 100.
• Week 2–3: laboratory knits produced and tested; add-on level adjusted until the target was met with margin.
• Week 4–5: wear trial on finished leggings, assessed after eight hours of wear.
• Pre-production: wash durability confirmed at 40 home washes, care wording written as avoid bleach and dry away from direct heat.
• Bulk: fixed recipe, consolidated dye lots, AATCC 100 repeated on every lot.

Specification delivered

Results

Repeat orders rose by 34% year on year for the treated style, and the untreated version was retired from the range. The odour value was re-measured on bulk fabric rather than on the approval sample, so the result reflects what customers actually received. The programme is now on its third repeat with the same recipe.

“We stopped apologising for smell complaints. The test report answers the question before it is asked.” — Ascend Form Product Team

Inline inspection and packing before the leggings shipment

Key takeaway

Odour control has to be engineered into the fabric, not sprayed onto it at the end. Defining the mechanism first and the test method second removed most of the risk in this programme. For Ascend Form, that turned a recurring complaint into a feature the brand could sell.