All posts tagged: terminology

Terminology: What is scroop?

This week I thought I would do a fun little terminology post, and when your term is scroop, there is no way you can’t have fun! What is scroop? Scroop is the sound that taffeta makes. Really. Yes, it is an actual, proper, technical textile term (not like all those costuming collective nouns that we came up with). Both silk and rayon taffetas (and some other silk and rayon fabrics) can have scroop, but it’s not caused by the weave, or the quality of the fabric. Scroop is added with a special acid treatment, which hardens the filament yarns that the fabric is woven from, making them rustle more. An early article on synthetic silk (rayon) mentions that it is shinier than real silk, but that its scroop is less. Scroop has an equally awesome synonym: froufrou (though since the 1950s people have begun to use it to mean frilly, rather than rustle-y, leading to a shift in the meaning). (bonus awesome thing – there was a British peer names Scroop Egerton, he was the …

Witches Britches

Published by The Dreamstress

Back in October when I did the talk on Steampunk fashions for Aethercon I really wanted to make something to illustrate the introduction of aniline dyes in the late 1850s. It’s one of the things that has always confused me about Steampunk fashion. Why do you see so few chemical brights in Steampunk attire, when the discovery of aniline dyes was THE big textile innovation of the Victorian era? The problem with talking about aniline dyes is well…me. Or, more precisely, my stash. I don’t know if you have noticed, but it tends to be on the muted/colours you can achieve with natural dyes side. The only aniline-accurate colour that I have in any quantity is black, which isn’t very exciting. So I had a massive search through my ENTIRE stash (this is quite an undertaking), and found the single other piece of fabric in an aniline hue that I own – a 3/4 length kimono jacket in self-striped mauvine-ish satin. Since I only had a 3/4 length jacket to work with, I was …

Terminology: What is bagheera? (and a bonus definition)

Published by The Dreamstress

Bagheera is fine, uncut pile velvet. It was originally made of silk, but after the introduction of cellulose fabrics it could be made of rayon. It was popular in the 1930s & 40s. A 1933 fashion column describes it as ‘a crepe velvet with a matte surface’. The ‘matte surface’ refers to the rough, uncut pile which absorbs rather than reflecting light. The crepe makes it crush-resistant, and gives it a lovely drape, making it very popular for evening wear. Heavier bagheeras are also used in furnishing, because the crush-resistant quality makes it suitable for chairs and other items that get heavy wear. Bagheera is first used as a term for the particular type of velvet in the early 30s, and mentions in the early ’30s sometimes use quotation marks, indicating it was a novel term. It was used for evening dresses and skirts, glamourous house-robes (the replacement for the tea gown), as an alternative to fur for wraps and jackets, and in millinery. Bagheera remained popular into the early ’40s, but was another …