Uniform fabric terms: I

I

ICE cotton futures

The Cotton No. 2 futures contract traded on ICE Futures US, quoted in US cents per pound of lint. It is the most widely used global reference for cotton prices, including by Indian traders and spinners.

Importer of record

The party legally responsible for a consignment at the destination customs: filing the entry, paying the duty and holding the records. It follows from the Incoterm and the contract, and it is not always the party that placed the order.

Incoterms

Standard three-letter trade terms such as FOB or CIF that define who arranges and pays for transport, insurance and customs at each stage of an international shipment. Read the guide on Incoterms

Index of Industrial Production (IIP)

India's official monthly index of output volume, not of price, published by the Ministry of Statistics and rebased to 2022-23 in 2026. It carries separate lines for manufacture of textiles and manufacture of wearing apparel, so it can show cloth volume rising while garment volume falls, which price series cannot.

Input tax credit

The mechanism by which tax paid on a business purchase can be set against tax collected on your own sales, subject to conditions, so it is not absorbed as a cost. Read the guide on Input tax credit

Inspection frame

The backlit frame fabric is run over so faults can be seen and marked as the roll passes. It is where four-point inspection is actually carried out, at the mill and again at the buyer's end. Read the guide on Inspection frame

Interlining

The layer bonded or sewn behind a collar, cuff or placket to give it structure the shell fabric was never meant to provide. It has to be matched to the shell's shrinkage, because two bonded layers that shrink at different rates buckle and show as bubbling. Read the guide on Interlining

Inverted duty structure

A tax or duty structure where the rate on an input is higher than the rate on the finished goods made from it, leaving the manufacturer with credit or cost it cannot pass on. India's GST version in textiles was removed in September 2025 when fibre, yarn and fabric all moved to a flat 5 percent; customs duty on imported inputs is a separate instrument and can still be inverted.

IS 15853

The Indian standard for polyester blended woven suiting for uniforms, the one most public tenders reach for. It sets requirements for width, mass, blend composition, strength, dimensional change and colour fastness, and includes a minimum pilling grade of 4. Confirm the current edition before citing it in a contract. Read the guide on IS 15853

IS 17630

The Indian standard for bed sheets and pillow covers. It matters because the Medical Textiles Quality Control Order makes conformity to it mandatory for the products it covers, so it is a licensing question and not only a quality one. Read the guide on IS 17630

ISI mark

The certification mark showing a product is certified by BIS against a named Indian Standard. It applies only to products that have been notified, so many fabrics have no ISI mark to carry. Read the guide on ISI mark

ISO 105

The family of international colour fastness test methods. Each part covers one influence: C06 washing, X12 rubbing, B02 light, E04 perspiration. A test report should name the part used, because a grade means nothing without the method behind it. Read the guide on ISO 105

ISO 105-B02

Colour fastness to artificial light, tested under a xenon arc lamp. It is graded 1 to 8 against blue wool references, not on the 1 to 5 grey scale the wash and rubbing tests use, so a light fastness number never compares directly with the others. Read the guide on ISO 105-B02

ISO 105-C06

Colour fastness to domestic and commercial laundering. It reports two things, change in the shade itself and staining of adjacent white fabric, which is why a single wash fastness figure on a spec sheet is usually incomplete. Read the guide on ISO 105-C06

ISO 105-E04

Colour fastness to perspiration, run separately in acid and alkaline solutions. It is the test behind collar and underarm discolouration on shirting, and a tender that specifies it usually wants both results. Read the guide on ISO 105-E04

ISO 105-J02

Instrumental assessment of relative whiteness. The usual output is a CIE whiteness value under D65 illumination together with a tint value, which is how a white can be specified as a number instead of only as a swatch. Read the guide on ISO 105-J02

ISO 105-X05

Colour fastness to organic solvents, which is the test behind a dry cleaning claim. It answers whether the dye survives the solvent, not whether the garment survives the finishing press, which is where most dry cleaning complaints actually start. Read the guide on ISO 105-X05

ISO 105-X12

Colour fastness to rubbing, also called crocking. It is run dry and wet, and the wet figure is normally the lower of the two, which is what decides whether a dark trouser marks a light shirt. Read the guide on ISO 105-X12

ISO 11092

Water-vapour resistance, where a lower value means vapour passes more easily. It is measured under steady-state laboratory conditions, and it is a different property from liquid moisture transport even though both are sold as moisture management. Read the guide on ISO 11092

ISO 12945

The international test method for pilling. Part 1 uses a pilling box with the specimen on a tube, part 2 uses the Martindale instrument along a figure-of-eight path. Both return a visual grade from 1 to 5 against reference photographs, and neither sets a pass mark: the grade a fabric has to reach is set by the buyer or by a product standard. Read the guide on ISO 12945

ISO 12947

The ISO test method for abrasion resistance of fabrics by the Martindale apparatus, where a specimen is rubbed along a figure-of-eight path under a defined load and the result is reported in cycles to a stated endpoint. It is the standard behind a Martindale figure on a spec sheet, and the endpoint used matters as much as the cycle count, because thread breakage and appearance change are not the same failure. Read the guide on ISO 12947

ISO 14001

The international standard for environmental management systems, the environmental sibling of ISO 9001 for quality and ISO 45001 for occupational health and safety. It certifies that an organisation runs a documented system for managing its environmental impacts; it is not a product claim and says nothing about the chemistry in a given piece of cloth. Benny Cotts is ISO 9001:2015 certified and does not hold ISO 14001. Read the guide on ISO 14001

ISO 15797

Industrial laundering procedures for testing workwear, which run hotter and harsher than domestic wash methods. Uniform that will be laundered by a commercial contractor should be tested on this family rather than on a home-wash method. Read the guide on ISO 15797

ISO 1833

The international test method series for quantitative chemical analysis of fibre mixtures, used to verify a stated blend ratio such as 65/35. It dissolves one fibre and weighs what is left. Read the guide on ISO 1833

ISO 20743

The international quantitative method for the anti-bacterial activity of textile products, reported as a reduction against a named organism. Like its American counterpart it should be quoted with the number of launderings the sample had been through. Read the guide on ISO 20743

ISO 22196

Antibacterial activity on a non-porous surface. It is written for plastics and hard surfaces rather than for textiles, and it still turns up cited on fabric test reports, which is a signal to ask what was actually tested. Read the guide on ISO 22196

ISO 3759

The companion standard that covers how a specimen is prepared and marked before a shrinkage test, with reference points a stated distance apart. Without it the before measurement is not defined, so a shrinkage figure quoted with no marking standard is weaker than it looks. Read the guide on ISO 3759

ISO 45001

A management-system certification for occupational health and safety, covering how a site identifies and controls risk to workers. It is adjacent to a social audit and is not one, since it says nothing about wages, working hours or freedom of association. Read the guide on ISO 45001

ISO 5077

The test method for the dimensional change of a fabric after washing and drying. It only produces a comparable number when the wash procedure and the drying method are named alongside it, because the standard does not fix either on its own. Read the guide on ISO 5077

ISO 6330

The domestic laundering procedures used to condition a specimen before it is measured for shrinkage or appearance. It is a menu of procedures and temperatures rather than one wash, so citing it without naming the procedure inside it settles nothing. Read the guide on ISO 6330

ISO 9001

A quality management system standard. It certifies that a company runs documented, audited processes and keeps records, so it says something about consistency of process. It is not a product test, an environmental standard or a labour standard, and it makes no claim about the fabric itself. Read the guide on ISO 9001

ISO 9237

The test method for air permeability, measured as the airflow through a fabric at a stated pressure difference. The figure is meaningless without that pressure difference printed alongside it, and it does not convert to the American method. Read the guide on ISO 9237

Issuing agency

A body authorised to issue certificates of origin, in India typically a chamber of commerce or an export promotion council designated for the purpose, which the exporter applies to through the Directorate General of Foreign Trade's electronic system. The mill never issues its own certificate of origin. Read the guide on Issuing agency

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