Weave, weight and finish decide how a silk behaves on a body. A working guide to crêpe de Chine, charmeuse, georgette and habotai — and how to tell real silk from its imitations.
Silk is not one material. It is a fibre that behaves completely differently depending on how it is spun, woven and finished, and the differences matter more in lingerie than anywhere else, because here the cloth is not being looked at from two metres away. It is in continuous contact with skin, under tension, in heat, for most of a day. A silk that is magnificent as an evening cloth can be genuinely unpleasant against a body.
What follows is how we choose, and how you can assess a silk yourself with nothing but your hands and a little light.
The fibre itself
Mulberry silk is a continuous protein filament — a single strand reeled from one cocoon can run to several hundred metres — which is why it is smooth in a way no staple fibre can be. Cotton and wool are short fibres twisted together, so their surface is a field of protruding ends; silk's surface is essentially uninterrupted. That structural difference is the entire reason silk feels as it does, and it is also why it is gentler on skin: there is nothing to catch.
The fibre is also hygroscopic. It absorbs a meaningful proportion of its own weight in moisture and releases it into the air, which is why silk feels cool in heat and warm in cold, and why it does not develop the clammy quality that synthetics do after a few hours. In a climate like ours this is not a poetic point. It is the single most practical reason to use it.
Momme: the number that governs everything
Momme is a weight measure, roughly the weight in pounds of a piece of silk of a fixed traditional size. In practice it tells you density, and density determines drape, opacity and durability. The useful range for intimate garments runs from about eight to about twenty-two.
Below twelve momme a silk is light and translucent — appropriate for a layered panel or a gathered detail, and too insubstantial to hang well on its own. Between sixteen and nineteen is the working range for a slip or a chemise: enough mass for the cloth to fall under its own weight, particularly when cut on the bias, without becoming warm. Above twenty-two you are approaching a cloth for outerwear; it will hang beautifully and it will feel heavy against skin in any warm climate.
Momme also predicts life expectancy. A higher-momme silk has more fibre per square centimetre and simply survives more washing and more abrasion. A nine-momme charmeuse will show wear at the seams within a year of regular use; a nineteen-momme piece, properly laundered, will still be sound in a decade.
The four weaves worth knowing
- Charmeuse: satin weave, high lustre on the face, matte on the reverse. Fluid, cool, shows every seam and every needle mark.
- Crêpe de Chine: high-twist yarns give a fine pebbled surface and a dry hand. Less shine, more body, far more forgiving of a seam.
- Georgette: high twist in both directions. Matte, slightly grainy, sheer, with a resilience that resists creasing.
- Habotai: plain weave, light and soft, inexpensive. Suitable for a lining, not for a garment that must hold a line.
For most of our work we use crêpe de Chine rather than charmeuse, which surprises people who expect the shinier cloth. The reason is behaviour. Charmeuse is spectacular and unforgiving: it slides, it shows every stitch and every press mark, it holds a crease, and it clings to a warm body in a way that reads badly in a hot climate. Crêpe de Chine has that faint pebble from the high-twist yarns, which gives it a dry hand against skin, disguises a seam, and lets it move over a hip instead of sticking to it. We reserve charmeuse for pieces where the fall matters more than the wear — a bias slip meant for still, cool air.
How to tell real silk from its imitations
Polyester satin is engineered specifically to look like charmeuse in a photograph, and it does the job well. In the hand the differences are obvious once you know them.
First, temperature. Hold the cloth in a closed hand for ten seconds. Silk warms to your skin and then stops; polyester keeps warming and starts to feel slick and slightly damp, because it does not absorb moisture. Second, the lustre. Silk's shine changes colour as you tilt it, because the triangular cross-section of the filament refracts light — it goes from ivory to a faint gold. Polyester shines white from every angle. Third, sound. Crush a handful and listen: real silk gives a faint dry rustle, a sound often called scroop. Polyester is silent. Fourth, creasing: crush and release. Silk will hold a soft crease that falls out within minutes; polyester springs back instantly and perfectly, which is a giveaway rather than a virtue.
The definitive test is the burn test, on a single thread pulled from a seam allowance. Silk is a protein: it burns slowly, smells of burnt hair, self-extinguishes, and leaves a brittle black ash that crushes to powder. Polyester melts rather than burns, smells chemical and sweet, and leaves a hard bead that will not crush. Never do this on a finished garment, and never on the face of the cloth.
Finish, the invisible variable
Two identical silks can behave quite differently depending on how they were finished at the mill. Degumming — the removal of sericin, the natural gum coating the raw filament — determines softness; incomplete degumming leaves a cloth slightly stiff and faintly greyish. Sand-washing produces the matte, soft, slightly hazy hand that is fashionable and also weakens the cloth measurably, because it is literally abrading the surface. A heavily sand-washed silk is lovely for a season and thin at the seams by the third year.
We accept no finish that trades durability for immediate hand. A silk should feel very good on the first wearing and almost identical on the three-hundredth, and any process that flatters the first at the expense of the last is one we decline.
“Wear something that feels like silk against your skin — and know why it feels that way.”
GINA HF — Bangkok
What to ask before you buy
Three questions will tell you nearly everything. What weave is it? What momme? Has it been sand-washed? A house that cannot answer all three about its own cloth is buying finished fabric off a roll and does not know what it is selling. A house that answers immediately has been to the mill, and the answers themselves will tell you how the garment is going to behave in your hands, in your climate, in five years.
