Plate No. 035 · fabric

Corduroy

Corduroy is a cotton pile cloth in the fustian family: extra weft yarns float over the ground weave, are cut, and brush up into velvety ribs called wales that run the length of the cloth. The wale count per inch names the cloth, from fat eight-wale jumbo cord to fine twenty-one-wale needlecord. Woven around Manchester from the eighteenth century, it became the hard-wearing cloth of laborers and farmers, then of professors and 1970s tailoring. The render shows its signature ribbed face in stylized form.