With the latest athleisure trend hitting the mainstream and permeating workwear culture, there have been a slew of new performance fabrics coming out, each touting highly technological features that promise some sort of benefit for you, the wearer. One of the most commonly seen features in modern performance fabrics is “moisture-wicking”, but why should you care about something like this?

According to You Design It,

“Wicking is defined by Wikipedia as the flow of liquids through porous media. In t-shirt terms, this translates into the fabric being breathable and allowing sweat to transfer from the wearer’s body to the air around them.”

Let’s compare how a garment made of moisture-wicking fabric performs against a garment made of, let’s say, regular cotton.

Imagine you are running late for a shift, and you end up speedwalking most of your commute. By the time you’ve arrived, you have already sweat a fair amount, but it’s been mostly absorbed by your regular cotton scrubs. Awkwardly, your scrubs now have distinctive dark stains under your armpits and any other moist areas. What’s more, now that you are in the cold air-conditioned unit of your hospital, you might start to get chilly wearing your sweat-dampened clothing.

If you had been wearing scrubs made of moisture-wicking performance fabric, or even a versatile athleisure top, the moisture from your sweat would have been instantly pulled away from your skin and spread out over the fibers of the fabric. This means maximum comfort for you – and no embarrassing stains to worry about.