---
title: "Crêpe de chine"
description: "Crêpe de chine is a fine, light silk in plain weave whose soft crinkle comes from crepe-twist yarns in the weft."
type: Glossary
url: https://teazle.art/glossary/crepe-de-chine
published: 2026-10-18
updated: 2026-10-18
author: "The Teazle editors"
---

# Crêpe de chine

*Crêpe de chine is a fine, light silk in plain weave whose soft crinkle comes from crepe-twist yarns in the weft.*

Crêpe de chine is a fine, lightweight silk fabric in plain weave whose soft crinkle comes from crepe-twist yarns in the weft. The name is French for crepe of China.

## How was it made?

In a 1924 handbook for silk mills, Horace Neild describes a crêpe de chine with a raw-silk warp that has not been twisted and a weft of three-thread silk twisted 60 to 65 turns per inch, half right-hand and half left-hand. Two picks of one twist are followed by two of the other, so that the cloth contracts evenly when it is dyed and finished. His cloth was woven 44 inches wide and finished 39 to 40 inches, a loss he attributes to the twist.

## Which yarns carry the crepe?

Sources differ on the detail. Neild and the later textbook Woven Cloth Construction by Robinson and Marks put the crepe twist in the weft, with a normal-twist warp. Grace Denny's 1923 glossary credits the right- and left-twist yarns of the warp. Elizabeth Dyer's textbook says surfaces like those of crêpe de chine and georgette crepe are made by alternating right- and left-twist yarns in the filling.

## How does it differ from georgette?

Georgette carries crepe twist in both warp and weft and is sheer and dull; crêpe de chine, with crepe twist in the weft only, is less sheer. Moss crepe is a different build again, with two-ply yarns and a crepe weave.


## Sources

1. [Horace Neild, Dissecting and Calculating Silk Fabrics (1924)](https://archive.org/details/dissectingcalcul00neil). The American Silk Journal, New York
2. [Grace G. Denny, Fabrics and How to Know Them (1923)](https://archive.org/details/fabricshowtoknow00denn). J. B. Lippincott, Philadelphia
3. [Elizabeth Dyer, Textile Fabrics (scan dated 1927; another scan 1923)](https://archive.org/details/textilefabrics00dyer). Houghton Mifflin, Boston
4. [A. T. C. Robinson and R. Marks, Woven Cloth Construction (1967)](https://archive.org/details/wovenclothconstr0000robi). Butterworth / Textile Institute

Canonical: https://teazle.art/glossary/crepe-de-chine