Taffeta (archaically spelledtaffety ortaffata) is a crisp, smooth,plain woven fabric made fromsilk,nylon,cuprammonium rayons,acetate, orpolyester. The word came into Middle English via Old French and Old Italian, which borrowed thePersian wordtāfta (تافته), which means "silk" or "linen cloth".[1] As clothing, it is used inball gowns,wedding dresses, andcorsets, and in interior decoration, for curtains or wallcovering. It tends to yield a stiff cloth with a starched appearance that holds its shape better than many other fabrics and does not sag or drape.[2][3]
Silk taffeta is of two types: yarn-dyed and piece-dyed. Piece-dyed taffeta is often used inlinings and is quite soft. Yarn-dyed taffeta is much stiffer and is often used in evening dresses.Shot silk taffeta was one of the most highly-sought forms ofByzantine silk, and may have been the fabric known aspurpura.[4]
Modern taffeta was first woven in Italy and France and until the 1950s in Japan.Warp-printed taffeta orchiné, mainly made in France from the 18th century onwards, is sometimes called "pompadour taffeta" afterMadame de Pompadour.[5] Today, most raw silk taffeta is produced in India and Pakistan. There, even in the modern period,handlooms have been widely used, but since the 1990s, taffeta has been largely produced on mechanicallooms in theBangalore area. From the 1970s until the 1990s, theJiangsu province of China produced fine silk taffetas: these were less flexible than those from Indian mills, however, and the latter continue to dominate production. Other countries in South-East and Western Asia also produce silk taffeta, but these products tend not yet to be equal in quality or competitiveness to those from India.[citation needed]
Taffeta has seen use for purposes other than clothing fabric, including the following:
On November 4, 1782, taffeta was used byJoseph Montgolfier of France to construct a small, cube-shapedballoon. This was the beginning of many experiments using taffeta balloons by the Montgolfier brothers, and led to the first known human flight in a lighter-than-air craft.[6]
Synthetic fibre forms of taffeta have been used to simulate the structure of blood vessels.[7]
Tabby cats were so named in the 1600s because of their resemblance to atabby, a type of striped silk taffeta.[8]
^Gillispie, Charles Coulston (1983).The Montgolfier Brothers and the Invention of Aviation 1783-1784. Princeton University Press. pp. 15, 16 and 21.ISBN9780691641157.
Dictionary of Textiles, Louis Harmuth. New York: Fairchild Publishing Company, 1915, p. 184 (reprinted by Kessinger Publishing, 2010,ISBN978-1-161-77823-6)
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