How silk ties are made

Your silk tie is created from probably the most beautiful and expensive of all textiles, and the silk that made your silk tie comes from the cocoon of the silkworm.

Silkworms feed on Mulberry leaves and secret a protein like substance from their head, covering the entire body to form the cocoon. These cocoons, which may be white, yellow or greyish in colour, are then farmed and delivered to factories known as filatures where they can be turned into raw silk. The production of cocoon for its filament is called sericulture.

The filatures sort the cocoons, according to their colour, size, shape and texture as these affect the final quality of the silk, and then the cocoons are softened so that the filament can be unwound as one continuous thread. As it is, the filament is too fine for commercial use so it must be combined with between 3 to 10 strands of other filaments to create a thread. This combination of strands is raw silk, known as reeled silk, and each length is between 300 and 600 metres.

The final part of the process is called bailing, where these skeins of reeled silk are packed into small bundles known as books. Each book weighs between 2 and 4.5kg and will help to make up a bale of about 60kg.

Bales of raw silk are sent to silk mills all across the world.

Silk neckties are a fabulous example of using silk fabric for everyday wear. There are many silk fabrics (including plain silk in deluxe and super deluxe quality, dupion, charka silk, chiffon, crepe, silk satin, organza, chinnon, tabby silk, murshidabad and matka) with a multitude of uses; everything from silk ties to scarves, stoles, dresses, saris, suits, bed linen, furnishing fabric and many many more.

How can you be sure you have a genuine silk tie?

Burning silk is the best way to be sure that you have the genuine article because the burning fabric will extinguish itself when you take the flame away and leave only a powdery ash. But DO NOT test your silk tie in this way!

At Silkworm all of our silk neckties are made by hand from the design printing to seaming. Silkworm uses only genuine, finest quality jacquard silk and wool mix interlinings to produce a substantial knot and durability.