Plate No. 073fabric
The render is a stylized impression of the short cotton pile.
- First documented
- 1700s
- Origin
- England, United Kingdom
- Fiber
- cotton
- Weave
- weft pile, cut
- Family
- pile
Plate No. 073 · fabric
Velveteen
Velveteen is cotton's answer to velvet: a short, dense cut pile raised not from an extra warp, as true velvet is, but from extra weft floats slit after weaving, the fustian method. The pile is shorter and the luster quieter than silk velvet, which gives velveteen a matte, plush depth that wears hard and washes sanely. It clothed Victorian children and furnished parlors, and it owns one of literature's gentler monuments: the Velveteen Rabbit, loved threadbare into being real.
Named for
Velvet with the diminutive -een: the cotton imitation of the silk original.
In the record
- 1922Margery Williams published The Velveteen Rabbit, fixing the cloth in the language of childhood.