Double face silk duchess

Double face silk duchess is a silk satin, a densely woven fabric with high shine. It is a formal silk fabric for structured garments. 

Silk fabrics start with the silkworm cocoon

Silk starts as a single filament, unwound from the cocoon of the silkworm. That filament carries two proteins: fibroin, which gives the fiber its strength and makes up most of its weight, and sericin, a gum-like coating that binds the strands together during the cocoon's life. Sericin is washed away before weaving, and it is that step, done thoroughly, that gives silk its clean, even shine (Qi et al., 2017).

Raw filament from the cocoon is too fine to weave on it's own. Several strands are drawn together and twisted, or thrown, into a single yarn, and it is here that a fabric's future characteristics are decided. A soft, low-tension throw makes a fluid yarn, resulting in light fabrics like chiffon. A firmer, higher-tension throw makes the denser yarn duchess satin needs to hold its structured shape.

How the yarn becomes the double face silk duchess textile

Duchess is a satin weave, one of the three foundational ways cloth is built, alongside plain weave and twill. Instead of crossing over and under at nearly every thread, a satin weave lets the warp float across several weft threads before catching just one, which is what removes any visible diagonal line and gives the surface its long, unbroken sheen.

The double face version takes it further. Rather than one lustrous side and one plain reverse, both faces are woven with that same satin float, so the fabric catches light evenly. Duchesse is woven on a Rapier loom in a 8H float pattern, which means the weft travels over 8 warp threads before it goes under one thread. 

An illustration of the satin weave. The vertical lines are the warp, horizontal lines are the weft. Source: Wikipedia.

Silk fiber is genuinely strong for its weight, stiffer along its length than across it, which is part of why a duchess satin garment can hold volume and structure.

Mia Silk Duchess dress, is cut from this specific deadstock silk sourced through Nona source, made up by Manufacture Oslo. Deadstock means the fabric already existed, unused, before this dress was made from it, so no new silk was produced for the piece. 

Because the fabric is structured it holds up well over time, though it still needs to be dry cleaned instead of washed. For more on caring for silk pieces specifically, see Color Vision's guide to caring for luxury garments.

Sources
Qi, Y., Wang, H., Wei, K., Yang, Y., Zheng, R.-Y., Kim, I. S., & Zhang, K.-Q. (2017). A Review of Structure Construction of Silk Fibroin Biomaterials from Single Structures to Multi-Level Structures. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 18(3), 237.

Written by Iben Bergstrøm, founder and third generation textile expert
Iben Bergstrøm is the founder of Color Vision and a third generation textile expert. Her great grandmother was a dressmaker, her grandfather a textile engineer, her mother a textile artist. She writes from that inheritance, on fabric, craft, and the quiet knowledge passed down through three generations of hands.