Today I'm thinking about how many fabric names are applied to more than one distinctly different fabric. Case in point is the fabric of the day: Fleece What makes this fabric name confusing is that... Fleece is the thick covering of hair fiber on an animal, especially a sheep, or this covering used to make a piece of clothing. It is also the tanned skin of a sheep with the fleece left on; used for clothing—synonymous with sheepskin. It is also a verb that means shearing the wool from the animal, and the verb that means rip off; charge an exorbitant amount. And it's the fleece that takes up a disproportionate amount of space in fabric stores today. That fleece’s full name is polar fleece, and I will get to writing about it for the fabric resource, but haven’t been in a rush about it... There's also sweatshirt fleece—again, not at all the fleece I wanted to talk about today. The fleece I'm talking about is made of woven wool, and you are most apt to see it cut into a good-quality vintage coat. Fleece is made of wool, mohair (as well as other specialty hairs) and blends. The nap covers the fabric’s construction which is usually right-hand twill or satin weave. With its soft nap all brushed in one direction, woven fleece has a longer, hairier nap than duvetyn. Uses: Coats, hats See also: Duvetyn Sweatshirt fleece This is a thickly napped wool fleece This is less thick wool fleece Here is a 1940s Lilli Ann ad which mentions "heavenly rich soft fleece" and I believe the coat pictured is of this fabric. This is an thickly napped mohair/wool-blend fleece: This is a coat by Sophie Gimbel. If you click HERE you can zoom in to see the fabric better (I love that feature in Google Arts & Culture). Woman wearing fleece jacket made of wool and Orlon acrylic (Credit: Hagley Collection. You can zoom in HERE)
I know that the person I was 20 years ago would be wondering if everyone who is anyone needed to name this fabric each and every time. I believe that if you understand what nap is, and are able to identify wool even if in a blend, you can describe an item as being wool or wool blend with a nap. It's important to understand the divergent uses of the word fleece, or at least be aware that there is more than one fleece. It's even better to know that fleece has cousins in the napped coat-weight fabric world. I'm thinking about bringing those up next week, but if you want, we can talk about them this week. Any thoughts?
