Georgette

Georgette is a thin, sheer, dull fabric, traditionally silk, with a crepe surface made by twisting both the warp and the weft yarns very hard, alternately to the right and to the left.

How is georgette made?

Horace Neild's 1924 handbook for silk mills gives a typical specification: a plain weave on four shafts, with three-thread silk twisted 75 turns per inch in both warp and filling, half right-hand and half left-hand, laid in as two ends of one twist followed by two of the other. Grace Denny's 1923 glossary adds that georgette was woven in the gum, which was removed when the cloth was dyed and finished, and that the "crepy" effect comes from right and left twist in warp and filling alike.

Why does it crinkle?

Elizabeth Dyer's textbook explains that when crepe cloth is washed or dyed, the alternating yarns pull in different directions, which produces an even crepe surface. Because a single hard-twisted yarn snarls in skeins, Neild notes, such cloth was woven undyed and dyed in the piece.

How does it differ from moss crepe?

Georgette is a plain weave of single crepe-twist yarns and is sheer. Moss crepe uses two-ply yarns in a crepe weave and is heavier, with a mossy grain. See also crepe and crêpe de chine.

Sources

1. Horace Neild, Dissecting and Calculating Silk Fabrics (1924). The American Silk Journal, New York
2. Grace G. Denny, Fabrics and How to Know Them (1923). J. B. Lippincott, Philadelphia
3. Elizabeth Dyer, Textile Fabrics (scan dated 1927; another scan 1923). Houghton Mifflin, Boston

See also

• Crêpe

Read more

• Moss Crepe: The Grain Is in the Yarn

Last updated October 18, 2026 · Markdown