Brocade Fabric Mills

What Brocade Is

Brocade is a figured fabric woven on a jacquard loom, where individual warp threads are controlled separately so a design can be built into the cloth itself. The pattern areas are woven with supplementary weft threads that float across the back and appear on the face as raised, often lustrous motifs - flowers, vines, medallions - standing slightly proud of a smoother ground. The formal Brocade Fabric Definition states the structure precisely; the short version is that brocade's decoration is construction, not surface print, which is why a true brocade shows the design reversed in tone on its back and why it costs more than a printed imitation of the same motif.

Historically brocade was a luxury silk, woven with gold and silver threads for court dress and church vestments in China, India, Persia and Europe; the name itself is tied to the Italian broccato, embossed cloth. Modern brocade keeps the jacquard structure and widens the palette - silk still, but also cotton, rayon, polyester and metallic yarns - and the uses widen with it: evening and bridal dress, waistcoats and tailored jackets, curtains, upholstery and ceremonial textiles. The fabric is typically firm, holds a tailored shape, and rewards designs that respect the pattern repeat when cutting. The jacquard family context is in the Fabric Directory hub.

Handling brocade well is mostly a matter of respecting the floats. The supplementary threads that form the motif can snag, so brocade garments are stored away from rough surfaces and jewellery, and the cloth frays more readily than a plain weave, which is why seams are usually finished or bound. Dry cleaning is the common care route for silk and metallic brocades; sturdier cotton and polyester versions may tolerate gentle washing, but the mill's care data for the exact quality governs, as with any figured fabric.

Buying Brocade: What to Ask

Ask first about the fiber and the pattern: which yarns form the motif, whether metallic thread is present (it decides both sparkle and dry-cleaning behaviour), and the size of the pattern repeat, because a large repeat drives cutting waste on garments and must be matched at seams. Weight and backing come next - dress brocades and upholstery brocades share a name and a loom type but not a specification - followed by width, since decorative fabrics still appear in narrower traditional widths. Judge brocade from a cutting in real light: the motif is designed to change as the cloth moves, and a flat photograph shows only one of its faces.

Around this directory, the fabric trade on Apparel Search runs through the Machinery directory, Yarn Factories, Fabric Retail and Fabric Wholesalers, with the Fibers Directory and Fabric Definitions for terminology, the Clothing & Trim Manufacturers Directory for finished-goods factories, and Fashion Industry News, Clothing Industry Employment, Conversion Charts, Textiles and the Fabric Manufacturers Directory alongside.

Using This Directory

The listings below are the complete set for this category as Apparel Search carries it: two mills - Kuanging Industrial Co. Ltd. and Textiles Rio Lindo, S.A. de C.V. of Honduras - each linked to its profile in the Fabric Mills by Name section. No listing has been added or removed. Thank you for using the Apparel Search Fabric Mill Directory.

Brocade Fabric Mills Listed in This Directory