Is My Kimono Silk?
We get this question often, and the short answer is: burn it to be sure. But that answer is a bit too short when we’re talking about assessing vintage Japanese kimono silks.
Yes, the smell of burnt silk is distinctive - similar to burning hair - but vintage kimono fabrics can often be a blend of silk with linen, cotton, wool, or synthetics, which sometimes makes it difficult to be 100% sure of the fiber content. The video below shows the difference between burning silk and polyester which are often difficult for folks to differentiate.
The video below shows the difference in burning and ash between many more fibers, but has no audio, which is a little disappointing. Still, it’s a useful demonstration.
At Kyoto Kimono, we’ve been selling vintage Japanese textiles for over 20 years, and it still surprises us at times to see that what we thought was 100% silk was only a blend or was even fully synthetic.
Polyester was a popular substitute for kimono silks after WWII because it was cheaper to produce but could offer the look and feel of traditional silks. Kimono made before WWII are likely to be made from natural fibers, but that could still mean a blend of silk with cotton, rayon, wool, or linen.
Finding a place to snip some of your kimono fabric can be a challenge. Most kimono are lined and hand-sewn with salvages hidden inside the seams, so getting to an edge to snip and test is impossible without opening up some stitching. (Some unlined kimono may have salvage edges exposed, but many will have the salvage edges folded under and sewn shut. Summer cotton kimono are the exception, where the fabric edges are usually exposed.)
Most newbie kimono shoppers may think that all Japanese kimono are made from silk, and may be disappointed to learn otherwise. We like to look at each vintage kimono as a unique story - valuable beyond its fiber content for the history of its origin, design, purpose, and journey from the artisans who created it to our hands.
