Cloth

Old World textiles: Antico Setificio Fiorentino

The Privilege of Luxury – Short movie from Antico Setificio Fiorentino on Vimeo. This is an informative albeit promotional video of Antico Setificio Fiorentino, Florence’s last silk-making factory. It was established in 1786 and bought by the Stefano Ricci group in 2010. The factory specializes in silk and silk-linen damask, brocade and Ermisino taffeta woven …

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Fabric quality: A call to visualize and quantify

I have good news and bad news. The good news is that fabric quality can be measured. The bad news is that a fully fledged quality testing protocol is simply beyond the means of the average end user. Ultimately, quality testing should be done in the textile industry starting upstream from the fiber supplier and …

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Fabric quality: A test is not a test is not a test

In my previous posting, what I described was intended to convey a taste of what textile quality management professionals actually do. A key implication is that there is simply no way an end-user or consumer can hope to replicate what professionals do. The training, equipment and knowledge are all lacking. Clearly, the term “testing” has …

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#menswear, let me introduce you to textile science

When it comes to assessing fabrics, the world of #menswear has been hindered by a kind of “folk reasoning” which tends to oversimplify things in assessing quality. Let me give you a couple of examples I’ve observed. The first is an erroneous tendency to assess fabric quality and performance through a single variable such as …

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