Silk
Due to its brilliance, body and softness, silk is by far the most used fabric for ties’ production. It is essentially divided into “yarn-dyed” silk and “printed” silk. For a consolidated tradition, our silk comes exclusively from weaving and printing works in Como: a Made in Italy’s pride.
Yarn dyed
It is the silk in which the loom, appropriately intertwining silk threads of one or more colors, creates the designs that make up the fabric. The interweaving and overlapping of these threads gives the body of silk. Gauze, satin, shantung, reps, sablé: these are just some of the most common textile structures (or weaves) and then, solid colours, stripes, small geometric designs the most sought-after patterns of yarn-dyed, even if ,the three-dimensional effect characteristic of these fabrics gives an unexpected depth to floral or damaskpatterns. Due to its texture, this silk is perfect for ties, bow ties and tuxedo cummerbunds.
Printed Silk
In its name, the essential characteristic of this silk: colors and designs are printed directly on the fabric. This allows, unlike yarn-dyed, to obtain very bright colors and a lighter and more vaporous silk which makes it pleasantly appropriate for accessories that are in direct contact with our skin such as ascots, scarves and foulards and of course gaudy ties and bow ties. During the production phase, appropriate treatments, as “stone washed,” finishing “and others, allow to create more nuanced tones and modify the body of the fabrics. For those interested for, here below, a few lines to describe the printing process.
Printing is done by applying the color to a film with a spatula (print frame): in correspondence with the drawings, suitably shaped, there is a permeable gauze that lets the paint seep onto the underlying fabric forming the design. Each print frame distributes only one color, therefore, if the fabric has ten different colors, will be required 10 color passes, each with a different print frame with its own portion of the design placed in such a way as to match those of the previous paintings so as to compose the final results. Today, often, this accurate and complex procedure, which allows a great vividness of colors even on the “reverse” of the fabric (much appreciated in the manufacture of scarves and foulards), is replaced by the ink jet method.
Wool and other natural fibers
If silk is by far the most used fabric for ties, wool is no less precious for creating surprisingly elegant combinations. Its use in autumn and winter is not only due to the warmth and body that the fabric gives us but above all to the softness of the colors that the wool gives in the shades typical of these seasons: brown, ocher, tobacco, burnt and musk evoke the colors of the forest and fit perfectly with flannel shirts and tweed or velvet jackets together with sturdy shoes with a decidedly winter cut. Like silk, wool boasts a deep-rooted Made in Italy tradition coming largely from the historic production sector of Biella
On the other hand, in spring and summer, linen and cotton are materials that are preferred for their ease of transpiration and pleasant freshness; neutral and pastel colors to be combined with natural colored jackets for a nice light combination with a “colonial” taste. Tie, shirt and jacket, with an elegant Panama’s help suitably trodden on the head, can challenge the most oppressive heat wave.
