Brocade

Textile & Clothing definitions and Glossaries.

A Pattern Woven In, Thread by Thread

Brocade belongs to the family of figured textiles whose decoration is structural. A printed pattern sits on finished cloth and can crack, fade or peel away from it; an embroidered pattern is stitched through finished cloth. A brocade pattern is the cloth, in the places where it appears: the loom inserts additional weft threads — the brocading wefts — that travel only within their motif, floating across the back where the design does not need them and rising to the face where it does. Historically those wefts were silk in strong colors and, in the richest work, gold or silver thread, which is why brocade became the prestige fabric of courts and churches across Asia and Europe: the splendor could not wash off, wear off or be separated from the garment. The trade name still signals that construction; a light printed cloth in a brocade-style pattern is an imitation of the weave, not the weave itself.

Where Brocade's Qualities Fit

Weight, stiffness and a raised surface decide brocade's uses. A fabric that holds its own shape suits structured formal garments — evening jackets, waistcoats, ceremonial robes, formal dresses with shaped bodices — and furnishing work such as upholstery, drapery and cushions, where body is an advantage and the cloth is not repeatedly flexed at elbows and knees. The same qualities argue against it for soft, fluid clothing: brocade does not drape, its floats catch on jewelry and rough surfaces, and its thickness makes fine seams and small details clumsy. Modern brocades widen the fiber range well beyond silk — cotton, wool and synthetic brocades serve upholstery and fashion at lower cost — but the defining test remains the weave: raised pattern threads integrated into the ground, visible as floats on the reverse. A buyer who turns a supposed brocade over and finds a flat, printed back is looking at an imitation, however convincing the face.

Brocade, Brocatelle and Related Figured Weaves

The figured-weave family has close relations worth separating. Brocatelle is a sturdier relative in which the pattern is pushed into higher relief, traditionally with a linen back, made for upholstery rather than dress. Lampas combines two warps and two wefts to build patterns of damask-like complexity in several colors. All share the jacquard loom's ability to lift warp threads in programmed patterns — the mechanism that replaced the drawloom's human pattern-reader and turned figured weaving from a luxury bottleneck into an industry — but each name describes a different thread structure, and confusing them leads to wrong expectations about weight, reversibility and price.