Silk is easy to claim and harder to fake, but a printed polyester square photographs beautifully, and the word “silk” is used loosely enough that a buyer is entitled to check. These are the tests that tell you something, roughly in the order you would sensibly try them.
Read the label first
In most markets a textile has to state what it is made of, so start there. What you want is a plain composition: 100% silk. What should slow you down is language that sounds like silk without quite saying it. Satin is a weave rather than a fibre, and a great deal of satin sold today is polyester. “Silky”, “silk touch” and “silk feel” describe an effect, not a material. Silk is often sold by weight as well, given in momme, which is a reasonable sign that the seller knows what they are selling.
Let the price talk
Silk has to be farmed, reeled and woven, and all of that costs money before anyone prints on it. Polyester is made in a factory by the kilometre. There is a floor below which a large printed square simply cannot be silk, and if the price sits well under it, the fibre is the first place the corner was cut. A high price proves nothing on its own.
Use your hands
Hold the cloth in a closed hand for a few seconds. Silk warms quickly to your own temperature and stays warm. Polyester feels cool and slick at first, warms slowly, and then holds the heat in a slightly clammy way. Draw the fabric across your palm: silk catches very faintly against dry skin rather than sliding like plastic. Crush a corner in your fist and let go. Silk creases a little and the creases soften out; polyester springs back almost perfectly, which is a virtue in a suitcase and a tell on a scarf.
Turn it to the light
This is the easiest test to run in a shop and the hardest to fake. Silk filament has a roughly triangular cross-section, which breaks light up, so a silk square changes tone as you tilt it, warmer from one angle, deeper from another, as though two colours were living in the same cloth. Polyester shines in a flat, white, even way that looks much the same from everywhere. Stand near a window and move the fabric. Silk shifts; a synthetic simply reflects.
The burn test, carefully
The one decisive test is destructive, so do it on a loose thread pulled from inside the hem, over a sink, with the rest of the scarf well out of the way. Silk burns like what it is, a protein fibre, from the same family as hair and wool. It smells of burnt hair, it tends to stop burning when the flame is taken away, and it leaves a dark brittle ash that crushes to powder between your fingers. Polyester melts rather than burns. It shrinks back from the flame, smells chemical, and leaves a hard little bead at the end of the thread that will not crush at all. One touch tells you everything.
What none of this will tell you
Be fair to the tests. A blend can pass the hand tests and fail the flame, and one burnt thread proves only what that thread was made of. A very good polyester can feel convincing for a few seconds, and silk from a poor weave can feel disappointing. Taken together, though, label, price, hand, light and flame are hard to fool all at once.
Silk does not need to announce itself. It simply behaves differently, and it does so every time.
Every Gatz foulard is 100% silk, and it behaves the way silk behaves. See the foulards →
