Fabric notes

Cloth decides more about how a piece behaves than the embroidery does. It sets whether a collar stands, whether you can stand outside in it in May, and what it looks like in a photograph taken with a flash. Here is what we actually think about each of the five we use most.

Raw silk

Our default for a sherwani. Matte, with a faint slub in the weave, and stiff enough to hold structure without interlining fighting it. It creases, which people worry about and should not — a raw silk crease drops out on a hanger overnight. It does not breathe especially well, so for a daytime summer ceremony we will usually talk you out of it.

Silk blend

Silk with a small proportion of viscose or polyester. Lighter, slightly shinier, noticeably cooler to wear, and more forgiving in a suitcase. It holds a collar less well than pure raw silk, so on a tall stand collar we compensate with a firmer canvas.

Velvet

For evening and for winter, and for nothing else. It is heavy, it is warm, and under warm light it does something no other cloth does. Two hard rules: never fold it along the pile, and never press it — a crease pressed into velvet is permanent. Hang it, always.

Cotton-silk

The daytime answer. Mehendi and haldi are outdoors, in the sun, in the middle of the day, and a guest in raw silk is visibly suffering by the second hour. Cotton-silk breathes, takes thread embroidery well, and takes zardozi badly — metal wire on a soft ground drags.

Brocade

The pattern is woven in, not applied, so it does not wear off. Usually too busy for a whole sherwani and perfect for the piece that sits next to one: a dupatta, a stole, a safa. If you want a brocade jacket, keep the embroidery off it entirely and let the weave do the work.

One thing about the cheap version

There is a polyester art silk that photographs almost identically to raw silk and costs a fifth as much. It looks fine. It does not breathe at all, it holds odour, and it develops a shine at the elbows after two wears. We do not use it, and if a price seems impossible for hand embroidery on silk, this is usually the reason.