Silk can undergo more than a hundred processes, before and after weaving, to achieve the effect desired by its creator. All the time-honoured expertise dedicated to the finishing of silk is alive and well in France’s Rhône-Alpes region, despite the turbulent history of the Lyon silk industry. Lyon can legitimately call itself the silk capital of France!
Silk is a unique fabric thanks to its unparalleled qualities: its softness to the touch and its shine; its hard-wearing properties (a single thread with a diameter of 1 millimetre can support a weight of 45 kg); its fine strands (a 3 g cocoon can create 100 metres of thread); its elasticity (a wrinkled piece of silk will smooth out once aired); its insulating properties (silk is warm in winter and cool in summer); and its absorption properties, which give it a certain affinity with dyes.
Beyond its intrinsic virtues, silk’s precious status is due to the care taken over its finishing – all the effort poured into it shines back out beautifully.
We print patterns onto this exceptional fabric because it gives off a rare, vibrant expression of colour, both in depth and outline. After fixing, silk is incomparable for the way it enriches colours. It’s as if the colours were pulsating and organic. And then comes the big reveal of the aspect that is most difficult to achieve and what every printer aims for: harmony of colours.
