The OneShirt: A Phoenix from the Ashes [4/24/13 UPDATE: A SHIRTMAKER, AN ENGLISHMAN, CHAMBRAY, AND F



A Y said:

Another possibility is that it gets the "old" look after a few washes.

Click to expand...

Quite possible. The striations are there, though they may not be as visible in the photo. In real life, there is a lot of variegation. But there is none of the spongy, fuzziness you refer to, and which I was expecting. Maybe that will come with a few washings.

In my full-sized pic, you can see the fuzziness, and at that point, the cloth had probably only been washed once (before cutting for preshrinkage). I think it was fuzzy straight out of the package, but I don't remember.

Yeah, there is no doubt we are dealing with two different animals. I'm not sure what to make of mine yet.

Mine is similar to AY's. Sad that it may have been discontinued, and I hope Foo's morphs into that version after a few washes.

Who the hell knows . . .

I don't really have a choice though, so I guess I'm the guinea pig!



mafoofan said:

Will is out of all chambray. He has voile, which he sometimes calls "new chambray." That is not the stuff I have, which is true chambray, though woven on newer looms and in full-width.

It sounds like he has at times sold both the old-loomed chambray and the new-loomed chambray--rightfully calling both "chambray."

Click to expand...

My recollection is that he sold the voile as chambray, then got the chambray, and both were always 150cm. I confirmed it by searching the posts on his blog. Also, he still has the "real" chambray listed for sale, alongside the voile. Only the blue color chambray is out of stock. All 150cm.

Anyway, I don't want to antagonize anyone, I just really doubt any of the chambray people were showing off was really made on 18th century looms. That claim comes from Will, doesn't it? And it obviously isn't true for the stuff he's selling.

Oh, that "spongey" texture is from washing. If it still looks like that after it's ironed maybe you should turn the heat up a little.



mafoofan said:

Who the hell knows . . .

I don't really have a choice though, so I guess I'm the guinea pig!

Click to expand...

BTW, for some reason it occurred to me that perhaps the lingerie bags you were washing your Riva shirts in may have abraded the cloth more than normal. I've always tossed my shirts into the wash with everything else, and they seem none the worse for wear, but none were Rivas either.



Ataturk said:

My recollection is that he sold the voile as chambray, then got the chambray, and both were always 150cm. I confirmed it by searching the posts on his blog. Also, he still has the "real" chambray listed for sale, alongside the voile. Only the blue color chambray is out of stock. All 150cm.

Anyway, I don't want to antagonize anyone, I just really doubt any of the chambray people were showing off was really made on 18th century looms. That claim comes from Will, doesn't it? And it obviously isn't true for the stuff he's selling.

Click to expand...

He told me he's been out of the chambray for a while. The website just doesn't show it.

You got the new-loomed chambray, like what I have. But obviously some people got their hands on old-loomed stuff, as evidenced by the half-width dimensions, and they got it through Will. Now, whether those old looms are as old as the 18th century, I don't know, but clearly they are not modern full-width looms.



Ataturk said:

Oh, that "spongey" texture is from washing. If it still looks like that after it's ironed maybe you should turn the heat up a little.

Click to expand...

We may have different definitions of sponginess. Both the SG voile and chambray exhibit it, and it's right there next to the sharp creases the iron puts in the cloth.



A Y said:

BTW, for some reason it occurred to me that perhaps the lingerie bags you were washing your Riva shirts in may have abraded the cloth more than normal. I've always tossed my shirts into the wash with everything else, and they seem none the worse for wear, but none were Rivas either.

Click to expand...

Interesting theory. But I have trouble understanding how the bags would be more abrasive than other clothes in the washer. Also, the wear is in very specific, consistent areas: edges of seams and hems, points on collars and cuffs, etc.



A Y said:

We may have different definitions of sponginess. Both the SG voile and chambray exhibit it, and it's right there next to the sharp creases the iron puts in the cloth.

Click to expand...

There's no reason the voile would be spongier than the true "new" chambray, right? They are probably coming off the same looms.



mafoofan said:

There's no reason the voile would be spongier than the true "new" chambray, right? They are probably coming off the same looms.

Click to expand...

To add to the SG cloth confusion, I have both the pink and blue voiles, and the pink feels like a lighter weave than the blue. It's looser to the point that the collar stays can some times poke out a bit (that is, you can see a little bit of white under the collar points). The blue feels like a tighter weave with a relatively harder finish.

I say this to reinforce the point that we're dealing with small-batch artisanal products whose strengths probably don't include consistency of manufacture, so the differences we see may not be by design.

But about sponginess, I'm not sure how to compare the two. By spongey, I mean that there is a bit of give to the cloth when you pull it, and then it springs back when you let go. It's not like any of the other shirtings I've used.



A Y said:

But about sponginess, I'm not sure how to compare the two. By spongey, I mean that there is a bit of give to the cloth when you pull it, and then it springs back when you let go. It's not like any of the other shirtings I've used.

Click to expand...

I think that's from the finishing rather than the weaving. I have shirts made from various non-mainstream shirting fabrics (Indian madras, muslin, linen, even bedsheets), and they're all "spongy" like that.

Muslin actually has a lot of qualities of the famous Chambray--it's coarse, has a loose, air weave, stretchy or spongey, gets fuzzy after being washed, has imperfections, nubs, and the like. Even comes in 36" widths. I see Will charges about $110 for a shirt length, I could let some of my muslin go for $75...

I'm not sure how much finishing would influence the memory and resilience of a fabric. If anything, wouldn't any sort of finishing, such as a chemical treatment, weaken it? It seems to me that "sponginess" as Andre describes has a lot more to do with the intrinsic nature of the fibers used, how they are twisted/spun into yarns, and how the yarns are woven together.