... swimwear , garment and sportswear clothes . Spandex, or lycra, is a synthetic fabric with a base, like or . Spandex, however, has unique properties that ... the fibers may become exhausted. Unlike many other synthetic fabrics, spandex is a , and it is this fact that is responsible ... to fuse into a single structure. Spandex was developed by Dupont in 1959, long after many other synthetic fibers developed ...