Taffeta (archaically spelled taffety or taffata) is a crisp, smooth,
plain woven fabric made from
silk,
nylon,
cuprammonium rayons,
acetate, or
polyester. The word came into Middle English via Old French and Old Italian, which borrowed the
Persian word tāfta (تافته), which means "silk" or "linen cloth".[1] As clothing, it is used in
ball gowns,
wedding dresses, and
corsets, and in interior decoration for curtains or wallcovering. It tends to yield a stiff, starched-like cloth that holds its shape better than many other fabrics and does not sag or drape.[2][3]
Silk taffeta is of two types: yarn-dyed and piece-dyed. Piece-dyed taffeta is often used in
linings and is quite soft. Yarn-dyed taffeta is much stiffer and is often used in evening dresses.
Shot silk taffeta was one of the most highly-sought forms of
Byzantine silk, and may have been the fabric known as purpura.[4]
Production
Modern taffeta was first woven in Italy and France and until the 1950s in Japan.
Warp-printed taffeta or chiné, mainly made in France from the 18th century onwards, is sometimes called "pompadour taffeta" after
Madame de Pompadour.[5] Today most raw silk taffeta is produced in India and Pakistan. There, even in the modern period,
handlooms were widely used, but since the 1990s it has been produced on mechanical
looms in the
Bangalore area. From the 1970s until the 1990s, the
Jiangsu province of China produced fine silk taffetas: these were less flexible than those from Indian mills, however, which continue to dominate production. Other countries in South-East and Western Asia also produce silk taffeta, but these products tend not yet to be equal in quality or competitiveness to those from India.
Historical and current uses
Taffeta has seen use for purposes other than clothing fabric, including the following:
On November 4, 1782, taffeta was used by
Joseph Montgolfier of France to construct a small, cube-shaped
balloon. This was the beginning of many experiments using taffeta balloons by the Montgolfier brothers, and led to the first known human flight in a lighter-than-air craft.[6]
Synthetic fibre forms of taffeta have been used to simulate the structure of blood vessels.[7]
Tabby cats were so named in the 1600s because of their resemblance to a tabby, a type of striped silk taffeta.[8]
Dictionary of Textiles, Louis Harmuth. New York: Fairchild Publishing Company, 1915, p. 184 (reprinted by Kessinger Publishing, 2010,
ISBN978-1-161-77823-6)