“After a hundred years of stasis, YKK, the Japanese company that makes roughly half the world’s zippers, has decided it’s time to rethink the mechanism that holds much of modern clothing together. Their new AiryString zipper looks ordinary at first glance. Then you realize what’s missing: there’s no tape.

That absence transforms everything. Without the woven fabric that normally flanks the teeth, the AiryString is lighter, sleeker, and far more flexible. It’s a small but important redesign that feels almost futuristic in its simplicity, a fastening system that sinks into a garment instead of sitting on top of it…

However, removing the tape introduced a host of engineering problems. Those strips of fabric give a zipper its structure and provide the surface tailors sew through. Without them, YKK had to rethink every step of production.

The teeth were redesigned, the manufacturing process rewritten, and new machinery developed to attach the closure to garments. ‘The absence of the tape posed various production challenges,’ Nishizaki says. ‘We had to develop new manufacturing equipment and a dedicated sewing machine for integration.’ The result: a lighter, more flexible system that reduces material use and environmental impact compared with a standard Vislon zipper.”

From Wired.