Gap Inc. has unveiled a collection of tagless T-shirts for men under the Gap brand and for women and men at its Banana Republic stores over the past few months, after enjoying success with its tagless and seamless women's T-shirts sold by Gap Body. And Sara Lee Corp. launched this week a tagless bra version of Barely There, a seamless undergarment collection. The company also produces tag-free underwear for men, women, and children under the Hanes brand.

Shoppers can still find the logo and information about the garment inside the clothing - it's just stamped onto the fabric through heat-transfer technology. The process for making seamless garments is more complicated, requiring the use of new knitting machines, mostly made in Italy, that spit out completed garments based on preprogrammed computer commands that allow for different stitching patterns.

The impetus for these changes has been an increasing demand by consumers for more comfortable and better-looking clothing. Seams tend to pucker up, and tags chafe against the skin. The new offerings are also in sync with the current fashion trend - tighter-fitting clothing for both men and women. Seamless fashions, which typically retail for 10 percent or more than products with seams, also help apparel firms react quicker to trends because the garments do not have to be cut and sewn.

"This is going to be the next generation of clothing because it feels good and slims the body, and there are so many things you can do to it," said Jack Weinstock, president of corporate brands at New York-based Intertex Apparel Group.

This past spring, Intertex sold out of its collection of seamless colorful tops called Simply Seamless by Maurice Sasson, which made its debut in 220 stores, including Macy's, a unit of Federated Department Stores Inc. For spring 2005, Intertex plans to add skirts and to distribute its products to as many as 1,500 stores.

In fact, Intertex jumped on a new shade of green that became hot because it was able to create "blank" garments created in neutral colors that could be dyed within two weeks.

Others are also reporting strong sales of seamless and tagless clothing.

Since Sara Lee retired its tags from its entire Hanes men's underwear T-shirt line two years ago, sales have increased by double digits in a category that had been relatively stable, according to Jake Van Wyk, director of marketing for Hanes men's underwear.

Tami Wolfe, vice president and director of product development at J.C. Penney Co. Inc., said the response to its tagless knit tops for men and women under some of its own store labels has been "very favorable." More than 50 percent of its men's and women's knit shirts under its own store brands will be tagless within the next 15 to 18 months. It's also testing seamless activewear, sweaters and lingerie.

Based on strong sales, fashion company BCBG Max Azria now produces about 40 percent of its knit tops without seams, up from 10 percent two years ago.

Leah Ingram of New Hope, Pa., said she now wears seamless sport bras and bike shorts and has shopped for tagless shirts at Gap. "Tags always hit me in the wrong place," she said. "I can't tell you how many articles of clothing I've ruined over the years just trying to cut out the tags ... And if I could find seamless socks, I would buy them."

In a fiercely competitive apparel environment, where retailers can no longer dictate fashion trends, the industry is desperately seeking new ways to connect with the customer, says Marshall Cohen, senior industry analyst at NPD Group Inc., a market research company based in Port Washington, N.Y. Addressing consumers' concerns over comfort could make "the most loyal consumer jump to another brand," he said.

Cohen said shoppers are more opinionated about tagless clothing than seamless fashions simply because most don't know that seamless technology exists. About 18 percent of the 40,000 consumers NPD polled said they dislike clothing with tags.

Cohen expects about 10 percent of all clothing will be tagless within three years; overall seamless apparel will be less than that because it will take time for fashion companies to adopt the technology. Lingerie has made the deepest inroads in seamless, with 8 percent of the lingerie category bearing no seams. That figure should be up to 25 percent in the next three years, Cohen estimated.

Unlike a regular knitting machine, which produces yards of the same pattern that need to be cut and sewn, the seamless machines produce individual garments from yarn that is fed into the machine.

W. Alan Parker, executive vice president of Pam Trading Corp. - an exclusive sales and service representative for Santoni SPA, a Brescia, Italy-based seamless knitting machine manufacturer with about 95 percent of the market worldwide - estimated that seamless garments take 30 percent to 40 percent less time to make than cut-and-sew versions.

J.C. Penney estimates that it costs about one or two pennies more to make tagless clothing, which the retailer absorbs. But its seamless underwear launched this fall under its store label called Delicates retails for about 15 percent more, because of the specialized equipment involved and the high demand for such limited availability of machinery.

The big challenge for both is quality control. Keith Burchett, senior project manager for quality assurance at J.C. Penney, estimates that there are 17 different operations involving producing underwear with seams, which is checked at every stage. For seamless garments, the process involves only one or two operations.

For tagless garments, companies run the risk of having their suppliers produce poor quality goods only to be dumped elsewhere, tainting the brand since the label is embedded in the garment, and can't be simply snipped off before shipping to discounters.

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On the Net:

www.bcbg.com

www.gap.com

www.jcpenney.com

www.npd.com

www.saralee.com