Wrinkling is one of the most important factors that determine the visual aesthetic of our clothes. To investigate wrinkling characteristics in actual wear and explore the relationship between the wrinkling caused by wearing and testing results of the wrinkle recovery angle (WRA) method, we made a device that can produce wrinkles very similar to those on clothes. Twenty-four fabrics were wrinkled by the device, and the images of wrinkled fabrics were analyzed. Wrinkle density (WD) was defined for wrinkling characterization. In addition, fractal dimension (FD) and gray level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) variables were also used to describe wrinkling. These features were subsequently correlation analyzed with wrinkle recovery angles in 11 directions. The results show that both FD and WD can be used to characterize the wrinkling behavior and wrinkles generated by the device have obvious fractal characteristics. The larger the wrinkle recovery angle, the lower the fractal dimension. GLCM variables (energy, entropy, contrast, and correlation) had not shown obvious correlation with WRA. Furthermore, the wrinkling behavior in the 45 direction plays an important role in actual wear. It is advised that the WRA in the 45 direction be tested.Keywords fabric wrinkling, wrinkling analysis, wrinkle recovery angle, gray-level co-occurrence matrix, fractal dimension, actual wear Wrinkling, caused by washing, drying, or wearing, is one of the most important characteristics in determining the visual aesthetic of clothes. The annoying wrinkles can not only decrease the quality of clothes but also affect the mood of the wearer. Therefore, it is of vital importance to precisely and objectively measure and evaluate the wrinkle resistance of fabrics. Conventionally, the American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists (AATCC) TM 66-2008 and AATCC TM 128 2009 are the most commonly used testing methods. In the former method, wrinkles are caused by folding and compressing the fabric and the wrinkle recovery angle (WRA) of warp and weft directions is used to characterize the wrinkling behavior of the fabric. In the latter method, wrinkles are caused by rotating and compressing the fabric, and visual examination is used to evaluate the degree of wrinkling, during which wrinkle grades are acquired via experts by comparing the wrinkled fabrics with the standard replicas.There are deficiencies in subjective evaluation such as inconsistency of the results, difficulty in discriminating between the adjacent grades, and low efficiency. As a result, many experts have devoted themselves to more objective and reliable evaluation methods. In 1995, Youngjoo and Behnam analyzed the wrinkling degree of AATCC replica standards using a combination of texture and profile analysis techniques. 1 In 1999, Su and Xu used the laser line triangulation method to measure the three-dimensional (3D) surface data of a wrinkled fabric and built a neural network to perform wrinkle classification with regard to the visual standard. 2 In 2001, TJ Kang et al. measured ...