Silk Fiber

Silk is a fiber made of proteins secreted in the fluid state as single filament by a caterpillar, popularly known as 'silkworm'.  These silkworms feed on the selected food plants and spin cocoons as a 'protective shell' to perpetuate the life. Silkworm has four stages in its life cycle viz., egg, silkworm, pupa and moth.  Man interferes this life cycle at the cocoon stage to obtain the silk, a continuous filament of commercial importance, used in weaving of the dream fabric.

 silk producing processsilk worm         silk cocoon

Silk Yarn Characteristics

Silk's absorbency makes it comfortable to wear in warm weather and while active. Its low conductivity keeps warm air close to the skin during cold weather. It is often used for clothing such as shirts, ties, blouses, formal dresses, high fashion clothes, lining, lingerie, pajamas, robes, dress suits, sun dresses and Eastern folk costumes. For practical use, silk is excellent as clothing that protects from many biting insects that would ordinarily pierce clothing, such as mosquitoes and horseflies.

 silk yarn

Silk Fabrics

Fabrics that are often made from silk include charmeuse, habotai, chiffon, taffeta, crepe de chine, douppioni, noil, tussah, and shantung, among others.

Silk is one of the popular fabrics for apparel because of its unique properties. Silk is most luxurious fabric, the most comfortable fabric, the most absorbent of fabrics (equal to wool), the best fabric for drape, the best fabric for color, capable of the greatest luster, having the finest "hand" etc. These are some of the factors which make the fabric more popular. The fabric is cool in summer and warm in winter.

 silk charmeuse fabric

Silk Satin or Charmeuse vs Polyester Satin

Polyester satin is a manmade fabric produced from polymers. This polyester satin is essentially a fabric created from oil and has the same chemical composition as plastic bottles.

Silk satin or charmeuse, in contrast, is spun from the natural silk protein filament produced by the silk worm when forming its cocoon.

Charmeuse (French: [ʃaʁmøːz]) is a lightweight fabric woven with a satin weave, in which the warp threads cross over four or more of the backing (weft) threads. These float threads give the front of the fabric a smooth finish—lustrous and reflective—whereas the back has a dull finish.

You can use silk to make satin, as the word satin is merely referring to the type of weave structure. Silk satin fabric is a more expensive type of satin.

All Oscar Rossa silk sleepwear are in genuine 100% Mulberry Silk at highest quality level.     

It is not accurate to judge a fabric is silk or polyester only by hand feeling. Polyester can be finished much softer than silk, silk can be a little rough hand feeling than the polyester. It depends on the fabric finishing.    

All Oscar Rossa silk has extra anti-split finishing procedure during fabric processing.  This special procedure will make the delicate silk fabric more strong to use although it may compromise a little bit on the softness. In the meantime, the silk fabric was processed as soft as possible.

Benefit of Silk: Silk is the most hypoallergenic of all fabrics because of its natural protein structure. It contains natural protein and 18 essential amino acids including cellular albumen which helps speed up skin cell metabolism. Silk proves beneficial to those with sensitive skin conditions. Silk is a natural temperature regulator, it helps the body retain heat in cold weather and expel excess heat in warm weather. 

Silk charmeuse is soft and lustrous with the front side in satin finish and back side in dull finish.

 

Fun facts about silk

Do you know  

  1. that a silk rope is stronger than an equally thick metal wire?
  2. that half a kilo of caterpillars eats up to 12000 kilograms of mulberry tree leaves In its lifetime?
  3. that a silk worm eats 40000 times its own weight's worth of mulberry tree leaves between its birth and its pupating?
  4. that the fiber has an average width of 20 µm?
    (µm = micrometer, i.e. 1 millionth of a meter)
  5. that it takes up to 10 kg of cocoons to obtain 1 kg of silk.
  6. that one single filament can reach a lenght of up to 4000m?
  7. that it takes more than 25 mulberry trees to obtain 3 kg of silk?
  8. that a single silk worm can produce up to 15m of fiber per minute?
  9. that the silk worm increases in weight by the factor 12000 within 4 weeks of being born?
  10. that the silk worm grows to 25 times its size over the first 4 weeks?
  11. that a silk dress requires almost 70 kg of mulberry tree leaves?

So it's not surprising that silk is being traded as one of the most precious fibers.

 

Indeed, the fine, soft lustrous fiber fully qualifies it to be called “the queen of fabrics.” Silk is also comfortable to wear as it is soft to the touch, and does not cause any irritation to the skin.

 

Silk sleepwear is the ultimate in comfort and luxury.

Enjoy your Oscar Rossa luxury silk sleepwear at affordable prices.


 

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