I recently had several exchanges with someone interested in a silk Ralph Lauren suit. He was convinced that silk was an artificial fabric.
I'm very late to this thread, but am just now seeing it, and need to rant & rave!
It can be
very frustrating to deal with the lack of knowledge amongst both buyers and sellers about fabrics. I don't mean amongst the people here, because we all
ask when we're not sure of something. Nobody can ever know everything there is to know about fabric, but there are some basics everybody who deals in apparel
should know. But in general, the lack of understanding between fiber and weave has led to big "issues" in the vintage garment arena. As Marian pointed out, people today don't even seem to know what silk is (or that it's valued higher than a "silky polyester").
There's a dealer at the antique co-op I'm in who recently started stocking a lot of vintage clothing. He has acetate scarves (maker's labeled as such) and has "silk scarf" on his price tags. He also has a 70s' woven polyester blouse (no content label, but clearly poly) labeled as a "silk" blouse, and an obviously fake fur labeled and priced as genuine fur. I guess because the label says "clean by fur method only," he figures it's fur. Arrggghh....
Anyway, I brought these things to the attention of one of the co-op managers. I think it reflects very poorly on our co-op if dealers are selling things they have absolutely NO knowledge of, or won't take the time to learn the least little thing about. We're not all experts on everything we sell, but someone with a booth
loaded with clothing should know the difference between silk and cheap polyester (while some of today's better polys can be hard to tell from real silk just by feel, it's easy with most 70s' polys--even the high-end ones--to tell). Anyway, I about fell over when the manager said to me, "Well, silk has become a generic term these days; people call anything that's silky silk." Oh, really? I said to her, "Not in my world, and not in a million years. Silk is silk, and to call anything that's not silk, silk, is a blatant misrepresentation." Then I went on to show her the faux fur coat from Montgomery Ward's, priced at $365. I said, "That's not real fur." She asked me how I knew, and I pointed out, oh, maybe a zillion things that made me know it wasn't. But, of course, nothing ever got done about these things, and they're still for sale with fraudulent tags on them.
But this is part of why true vintage in hard-to-find styles and exquisite fabrics is being down-valued in the market--lack of knowledge, and much of it is being promulgated by sellers of vintage themselves. Who, unlike the wonderful folks here, don't bother to learn about what they're selling! (I cringe every time I see a 1960s' dress or suit on Etsy being marketed as a "1940s" piece--how DOES this happen?
