Thread count belongs to cotton. Silk has momme — the single measure that reveals weight, opacity and how a slip will fall over the hip. Here is how to read it.
When a woman asks how to judge a silk before she has even touched it, we tell her to ignore the marketing entirely and find one small word on the label: momme. It is the most honest number in textiles, and almost nobody outside the trade knows how to read it. In lingerie it matters more than anywhere else, because a slip has nowhere to hide. There is no lining, no interfacing, no jacket over the top. What the cloth weighs is what you wear.
What momme actually measures
Momme — pronounced like 'mummy' and written mm — is a weight measurement, not a thread count. It tells you how much a fixed area of silk weighs. The traditional definition: the weight in pounds of a piece of silk forty-five inches wide and one hundred yards long. So a 19 momme silk means that bolt weighs nineteen pounds. The higher the momme, the denser and heavier the cloth. It is the silk world's equivalent of carat — one figure that quietly encodes durability, opacity and drape, three things a woman buying a slip cares about above all others.
The ranges, and what they are for
Each weight has a purpose. A drawer of good lingerie uses several, and knowing the ranges lets you spot when a piece is built from silk too thin for its promise:
- 8–12 momme — featherlight. Chiffon and georgette for a sheer robe panel, a tap-pant overlay, the translucent yoke of a nightdress. Beautiful, and honestly sheer; never the body of a piece meant to be worn weekly for years.
- 12–16 momme — the classic charmeuse and habotai range. Camisoles, French knickers, the linings that sit between lace and skin. Fluid and luminous, with just enough body to hold a bias line.
- 16–22 momme — the middle ground we cut most of the house's slips from. Opaque against a lit window, weighty enough to fall clean over the hip without clinging to the stomach, and forgiving to a bias cut.
- 22–30 momme — heavyweight. Robes, kimono-cut dressing gowns, corselette outer layers and the covered panels of a longline piece. Silk that drapes like architecture and survives a decade of laundering.
“A higher momme is not always better — it is better for a purpose. A thirty-momme chiffon would be a contradiction. The number must answer the garment, and a slip and a robe are not the same garment.”
The atelier
Why the number decides how a slip behaves
Weight is what stops silk from clinging. A twelve-momme slip cut on the bias will follow every contour, because there is not enough mass in the cloth to overcome the static and the friction of skin. The same pattern cut in nineteen momme falls away from the body at the waist and rejoins it at the hip, which is the line every woman is actually asking for when she says she wants something that skims. This is why houses that skimp on momme have to compensate with a wider ease, and why their slips look loose rather than fluid. Weight buys you closeness without contact.
Why brands hide the number
Here is the quiet test of a serious house: it tells you the momme. A label that boasts of 'pure silk' but never states the weight is usually concealing a thin, low-momme cloth — often eight or ten momme — dressed up with a high price. Silk is sold by weight at the source, so a lighter momme is genuinely cheaper to make. When the price is high and the momme is missing, you are paying for featherweight cloth. Ask. A house that knows its own fabric will answer in a sentence.
How to feel momme without the label
With practice your hands learn to estimate it. Drape a length over two fingers and watch the fold: low-momme silk collapses into a thin, papery crease; high-momme silk falls into a rounded, sculptural curve that holds its own shape. Hold it to a window — under fourteen momme and you will see your hand through it, which for a nightdress may be exactly the intention and for a slip worn under clothes is a problem. Above eighteen it reads opaque. And listen, gently: heavier silks have a faint dry rustle, a whisper of substance, where the lightest ones make almost no sound at all.
The house cuts its slips and camisoles from 16 to 19 momme, its knickers and gussets from 14 to 16, and its robes from 22 upward. We print the number on every order card. It is the single fact that lets you compare us honestly with anyone — which is precisely why we volunteer it.
