Fabric & Textile Guide

Most fabric tags on genuinely old pieces are long gone, faded, or wrong. Learning to identify material by feel matters more in vintage than almost anywhere else.

• Cotton. Cool to the touch, matte finish, wrinkles easily and holds a crease. The most common vintage tee and workwear fabric by a wide margin.
• Denim. A cotton twill weave, diagonal ribbing visible up close, gets softer and fades uniquely with wear rather than degrading.
• Wool. Warm even when the room isn't, has natural spring and bounces back from a light crease, slightly rough or fuzzy up close depending on weave.
• Silk. Natural sheen that shifts as it moves, smooth but with a very faint texture up close, unlike the flat slickness of synthetic imitations.
• Rayon. Drapes fluidly, almost liquid in how it hangs, but wrinkles fast and creases hard, a fabric built for movement, not durability.
• Polyester and synthetic blends. Slicker, shinier sheen, doesn't wrinkle easily, and tends to feel cooler and less breathable than natural fiber against skin.

When two fabrics feel similar, weight is the tiebreaker. Natural fibers almost always carry more heft for the same thickness than synthetics do.